has embarked on a programme geared to produce multilingual promotional materials for the court proceedings so that it can be clearly understood by ordinary people.
Despite the fact that Swahili is among the African Union’s official
languages, it can be given due consideration in the new court
programme.
Other AU official languages include English, French, Portuguese and Arabic.
President of the court, Justice Augustino Ramadhani said this here
when addressing the 1st Colloquium of the Coalition for an effective
African Court and Human Peoples’ Rights, themed: “Building the Court we
want: Reflecting on Perspective of the Proposed African Court with
Criminal jurisdiction”.
The colloquium, which is meant to explore avenues for redress in
the fight against impunity provided by the Malabo protocol, has
attracted a number lawyers and academicians from different legal bodies
across Africa.
African Court Coalition is a network of non-governmental
organisations, independent national human rights institutions and
individual members which was formed during the first conference for the
promotion of the protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’
Rights establishing the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in
Niamey, Niger in May 2003 to advocate for an efficient and effective
African court.
The former Chief Justice said the court is working hard to ensure
that court’s basic facts are translated into Kiswahili, the language
which is widely spoken in East, central and southern Africa.
“We are working on translating court’s basic facts into Swahili,
the language which is widely spoken in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda,
Burundi, DR Congo, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and as far as South
Africa,” he said.
According to him, the move is part of the court initiatives to
scale-up the use of Swahili in the continent as well as empowering
Swahili speakers to ably understand what is going on in the pan African
court.
It is estimated that the total number of Swahili speakers vary
widely, from 60 million to over 140 million. Swahili serves as a
national or official language of four nations—Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda
and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“Other African languages will also be included in the programme,” he said.
On the implementation of the Malabo protocol, Justice Ramadhani
said: “No country has ratified the protocol, which gives the court more
power of to trying even the international crimes.”
He called on African nations to speed-up the process of signing and
ratifying the protocol as for the protocol to be operational needs to
be ratified by 15 African nations.
He also said AfCHPR has been failing to fulfill some of its mandates due limited funding.
“In 2013, we were supposed to go to Namibia to carry-out court
sessions as part of publicising the court activities, but we failed to
do so because of limited funding,” the AfCHPR boss said, adding that
right now the court depend on the German government through its
International Development Agency (GIZ).
He said that the court needs to be well-known by Africans, “that’s
why we are organising such sensitisation programmes in countries which
have ratified on the existence of this court.”
Ramadhani said the court is there to serve African people, but most
of them they are not aware of its existence, role and effectiveness.
In the first four years of its existence, from 2006 to 2010, the
Court received only one case though it had been ready to adjudicate on
matters since 2008.
But, from 2010, the number of cases lodged at the court has increased.
“That’s why; we think it is important to continue promoting this court, so that people get their justices.”
In ensuring that people who are unable to employ lawyers in their
cases get justice, the court boss said: “We have introduced legal aid, a
tool that is to assist those people who cannot afford to hire lawyers.”
SOURCE:
THE GUARDIAN
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