Partner State has “promoted” and “protected” human and
peoples’ rights in accordance with the provisions of the African
Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Applicant is
quite within the Treaty in seeking such interpretation and the
Court quite within its initial Jurisdiction in doing so and it will
not be shy in embracing that initial Jurisdiction.
We should conclude this question by adding that “Human
Rights” is defined in Black’s Law Dictionary – Eighth Edition as:
“the freedoms, immunities and benefits
that, according to modern values (esp. at
an international level), all human beings
should be able to claim as a matter of
right in the society in which they live”
24. When the Applicant seeks to know whether the Subject’s arrest
and detention was a breach of the Treaty, she is not asking the
Court to interpret the enforcement of any human right available
to the Subject, and that is why she withdrew her prayer for “an
order that the said Lieutenant colonel Seveline Rugigana
Ngabo be released from illegal detention”, because this court
would obviously have no such Jurisdiction. All she is seeking are
certain declarations within the mandate of the Court and we
have said why such Jurisdiction to make such declarations
exists.
REFERENCE NO.8 OF 2010
Page 17