th 34. On 7 March 2002 [sic], a reminder was sent to the Respondent State to forward its submissions within the prescribed time to enable the Secretariat to proceed with the communication. Law Admissibility 35. Article 56.5 of the African Charter provides: “The communications stipulated in Article 55 received by the Commission relating to human and peoples’ rights, must meet the following conditions in order to be investigated: (5) Be subsequent to exhausting all local remedies, if they exist, unless it is obvious to the Commission that the procedure for such recourse is abnormally prolonged;” 36. Concerning the question of exhausting local avenues of recourse, the Complainant informed the [African] Commission that no effective recourse was available and that, even if used, the Constitutional Court is not qualified due to the state of emergency and the political limitations, which makes it impossible to legitimately complain to the court. 37. He maintains that the grounds for a local remedy that could apply are rendered ineffective by the fact that the legal system in Sudan is neither free nor independent since the Sudanese courts have been controlled by the executive since 1998 and that, given this situation, the executive could not rule on proceedings brought against the Sudanese government which are based on international humanitarian law, or even apply this law when it is clearly relevant. 38. The Complainant alleges that, in practice, the procedures in place, which allow for compensation for human rights violations committed by the Government of Sudan, are often inaccessible to those individuals whose rights have been violated, due to the fact that current administrative and legal solutions are serious obstacles to their use. Consequently, complainants who ask that their rights be protected before Sudanese courts, come up against obstacles which make these avenues of redress ineffective. 39. The Sudanese government alleges that the complainants did not use the remedies available to them in the local courts before applying to the [African] Commission. It insists that neither the lawyer lodging the complaint, nor the complainants, filed an appeal against the decision; this is proved from the registers of the administrative courts. 40. The government maintains that the Complainants, despite their insistence in previous correspondence, did not transmit to them the reference number of the appeal that had been filed which proves that no appeal was filed, contrary to the assertions of the Complainants who therefore did not exhaust all the local remedies as provided in Article 56 of the African Charter. 41. It argues that the right of the Complainants to file an appeal against a decision of the court, is provided for in Article 20(1) of the Administrative and Constitutional Code of Justice of 1996 as amended in 2000, and documentation on decisions handed down in similar cases was submitted. 42. Article 56.5 of the African Charter requires that “a communication be introduced subsequent to exhaustion of local remedies, if they exist, unless it is obvious to the Commission that the procedure for such recourse is abnormally prolonged”. The complaint before the [African] Commission was th received by the Secretariat on 14 October 1998 and the decision to close the universities was taken th on 26 September 1998, an interval of one month between closure of the universities and receipt of the complaint. 43. The [African] Commission is of the view that an interval of one month is a short time within which the Complainant could have accessed and exhausted all local remedies. Furthermore, the Complainant gives no indication of instituting proceedings before the domestic courts. Holding For these reasons, and in accordance with Article 56.5 of the African Charter, the [African] Commission declares this communication inadmissible due to non-exhaustion of local remedies. th Done at the 31 Ordinary session held in Pretoria, South Africa from 2 nd th May to 16 May 2002.