III
African Court of Justice and Human Rights8 adopted on 1 July 2008 and which
is expected to replace the Protocol establishing the existing Court.9
6.
Furthermore, the foregoing four instruments make reference to the
discovery of a “fact” and not of an “evidence”, which is substantially different.
7.
A fact may indeed be defined as “an event which occurred or took
place”10 and evidence may be defined as the “demonstration of the existence of
a fact”.11 Although there are close links between “fact” and “evidence”, these
are two distinct concepts.
8.
International jurisprudence however seems to recognize that an evidence
may constitute a fact, discovery of which could provide grounds for a revision
of a judgment.
9.
The Permanent Court of International Justice made a restrictive
pronouncement on this issue; according to the latter, a newly produced
document may not constitute a new “fact”.12 The International Court of Justice,
for its part, did not come out clear on this issue in the three Judgments it
rendered on Applications for Revision;13 it does not however exclude that a
probative document could be regarded as a “fact”.14
8
Paragraph 1 of this Article indeed reads as follows: “An application for revision of a
judgment may be made to the Court only when it is based upon discovery of a new fact of
such nature as to be a decisive factor, which fact was, when the judgment was given,
unknown to the Court and also to the party claiming revision, provided that such ignorance
was not due to negligence”.
9
This Protocol will enter into force upon ratification by fifteen (15) States; as at 1 April 2016,
the Protocol had been signed by thirty (30) States and ratified by only five (5) States.
10
Jean Salmon (dir.), Dictionnaire de Droit international public, Bruxelles, Bruylant, 2001,
p. 493.
11
Jules Basdevant, Dictionnaire de la terminologie du droit international, Sirey, Paris, 1960,
p. 474; evidence may also be defined as follows: “A - Demonstration of the existence of a fact
or B - Element used to make such demonstration”, Jean Salmon (dir.), Dictionnaire de Droit
international public, op. cit., p. 874.
12
“As concerns new facts, there are none in the present case. It is true that, according to a
communication received by the Court from the Conference of Ambassadors, the Conference
was unacquainted with the documents sent by the Serb-Croat-Slovene State in support of its
claim for revision until June 1923. But in the opinion of the Court fresh documents do not in
themselves amount to fresh facts. No new fact, properly so-called, has been alleged”,
Permanent Court of International Justice, Question of the Monastery of Saint-Naoum
(Albanian Frontier), Advisory Opinion of 4 September 1924, series B, No. 9, p. 22.
13
Application for Revision and Interpretation of the Judgment of 24 February 1982 in the
Case Concerning the Continental Shelf (Tunisia/Libyan Arab Jamahiriya), (Tunisia v. Libyan
Arab Jamahiriya), Judgment ICJ Report 1985, p. 192; Application for Revision of the