rights and how to avail himself of such rights.” However, the UNHCR
document on ‘Detention of Refugees and Asylum-Seekers’ does not require
legal counsel, but merely that “refugees and asylum-seekers who are detained
be provided with the opportunity to contact the Office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees or, in the absence of such office, available
national refugee assistance agencies.”
217.
The Commission finds that not being able to contact their families is not a
violation of the procedural rights under Article 6, as it does not affect their
liberty or security. The remaining arguments of the Complainants is that the
Victims were not given specific reasons for their arrest nor were they given
access to lawyers or a court to determine the lawfulness of their detention. In
Abdolkhani and Karimnia v. Turkey, a case of the European Court of Human
Rights, the court held that because the reasons for their arrest was not
communicated to them, the right to review was effectively denied, and found
a violation under Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This
clearly shows that the right to reasons for the arrest is not an independent right,
rather it is related to the right to review, and is only a violation if it results in
the denial of effective review. As noted above, in the case of detention of
asylum-seekers and refugees, international standards do not require access to
a lawyer or a court for purposes of review, only that they be granted access to
UNHCR, which was in fact done in the present case. Commission thus finds
that being granted access to UNHCR is sufficient and that they did not in
addition have to be provided with legal counsel, since the UNHCR could have
sufficiently supported them in any administrative review processes. The
Commission thus finds that there was no violation of Article 6.
Analysis of Article 11
218.
The African Charter provides in Article 11 that “[e]very individual shall have
the right to assemble freely with others.” It further contains an internal
limitation, namely that “the exercise of this right shall be subject only to
necessary restrictions provided for by law in particular those enacted in the
interest of national security, the safety, health, ethics and rights and freedoms
of others.”
60