14. Admittedly, under the procedure before this Court and by virtue of Rule 37 of its
Rules, the Respondent State has sixty (60) days to respond to an Application filed
against it; but to give the same quantum when it is comes to informing the Court of the
execution of measures to prevent occurrence of unforeseeable, extremely serious
violations with irreparable consequences, does not seem logical to us.
15. If in the first case (filing of the Response to the Application) the Respondent State
must have sixty (60) days to investigate the case, search for, collect and establish the
evidence for its claims, this is not the case with regard to this Order.
16. For these reasons, it is our view that the decision to grant the party performing the
provisional measure sixty (60) days is neither logical nor reasonable.
IB. Unwarranted inconsistency of time limits
17. A global overview of the provisional measures so far issued by the Court reveals
that, while the legitimacy of the said measures does not call for comment on our part,
justification of the quantum of the time limits allowed for the State to submit its report
suffers from an unjustified variation.
18. It is noteworthy that the said time limits oscillate between fifteen (15)6, thirty (30)7
and sixty (60) days as in the instant case. Admittedly, the Judge has in this domain a
broad power of evaluation in as much as Rule 51 of the Rules in paragraphs 1 and 5
does not spell out cases of necessity, nor does it prescribe a particular time limit. The
Rule in question confines itself to stating that: "the Court may...prescribe to the parties
any interim measures which it deems necessary to adopt in the interest of the parties or of
justice" and that it may, in addition, "invite the parties to provide it with information on any
issue relating to implementation of the interim measures adopted by it".
19. In light of the foregoing provisions, we believe that in determining the time limit
contemplated in paragraph 5 of Rule 51, the Court should take into account certain
parameters, including inter alia, the very nature of the measure, the degree of
implementation or the imminence of the irreparable harm, the attitude of the party
effect even though execution of the convict was already scheduled for the very evening of the day of
the delivery of stay of execution decision and a report thereon followed.
6 See Order of 25 March 2011, African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights v. Great Libyan
Arab Jamahiriya; Order of 15 March 2013, African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights v
Republic of Kenya
1 See Order of 18 March 2016, Armand Guehi v. United Republic of Tanzania
4