35th Christof Heyns African Human Rights Moot Court Competition

The modern business and human rights agenda crystallized with the unanimous endorsement by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011 of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), authored by John Ruggie. The UNGPs articulate a three-pillar framework: the state duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, the corporate responsibility to respect human rights through due diligence, and access to effective remedy for victims. In Africa, the salience of this framework is amplified by the prevalence of extractive industries, large-scale agriculture, and transnational supply chains operating in jurisdictions with uneven regulatory capacity. Landmark cases — including litigation over oil pollution in the Niger Delta, security force violence around mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and forced evictions linked to agribusiness concessions — have repeatedly exposed governance gaps between host states, home states of parent companies, and the corporations themselves. The African regional human rights system has progressively engaged with these questions. The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights issued the State Reporting Guidelines and Principles on Articles 21 and 24 of the African Charter (2018), addressing extractive industries, environment and human rights, and adopted a Resolution on business and human rights (Resolution 550 of 2023) calling on states to develop National Action Plans. Several African states, including Kenya and Uganda, have adopted or drafted NAPs, while the African Continental Free Trade Area raises new questions about embedding human rights safeguards in continental investment rules. At the global level, negotiations on a legally binding instrument on transnational corporations and human rights have continued in Geneva since 2014, with African states broadly supportive but divided on scope and enforcement. The core dispute today concerns whether voluntary corporate due diligence is sufficient or whether mandatory legislation — including extraterritorial obligations on home states such as those reflected in the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive — is required to secure remedy for affected African communities. Debates focus on access to justice across borders, parent company liability, the role of development finance institutions, and how to balance investment attraction against rights protection.

Corruption has long been recognized as both a cause and a consequence of human rights violations, eroding public services, distorting justice systems, and entrenching inequality. The international anti-corruption architecture is anchored in the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC, 2003), complemented in Africa by the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption (2003), which entered into force in 2006. The AU Convention is distinctive for explicitly linking corruption to the realization of socio-economic rights and for incorporating obligations on political party financing, asset declarations, and private-sector corruption. The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights has issued resolutions affirming that grand corruption undermines the African Charter, and the African Court has begun to engage with cases touching on accountability for public officials. Despite this normative framework, implementation has lagged. Illicit financial flows from Africa were estimated by the Mbeki Panel report (2015) at over USD 50 billion annually, much of it linked to commercial tax abuse, trade misinvoicing, and corruption. State capture scandals — from the Gupta-linked revelations in South Africa investigated by the Zondo Commission, to oil sector scandals in Angola and Nigeria, to procurement abuses exposed during the COVID-19 response — have demonstrated how corruption hollows out the resources needed to fulfill rights to health, education, and an adequate standard of living. Whistleblower protection remains weak in many jurisdictions, and journalists and activists exposing corruption face criminalization and physical risk. The core debate concerns how to translate anti-corruption commitments into enforceable rights-based obligations: whether grand corruption should be recognized as an international crime, how to strengthen asset recovery and repatriation under UNCAC Chapter V, the role of beneficial ownership transparency, and how regional bodies can hold states accountable when domestic institutions are compromised. Cross-border cooperation with financial centers that host stolen assets remains a particular flashpoint.

Digital rights have moved to the center of African human rights discourse as internet penetration, mobile money, and platform-mediated public discourse have expanded rapidly. The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights adopted the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa (2019), which for the first time set out detailed standards on internet access, online expression, surveillance, and data protection under Article 9 of the African Charter. The African Union's Malabo Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection (2014) entered into force in 2023 after years of slow ratification, creating a continental baseline for data protection, though many states have moved ahead with their own legislation modeled in part on the EU's GDPR. At the same time, the practice of digital rights in Africa has been marked by a pattern of internet shutdowns — documented annually by organizations such as Access Now's #KeepItOn coalition — often imposed around elections or protests, including in Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, and Senegal. Disinformation laws and cybercrime statutes have in several jurisdictions been used to prosecute journalists and bloggers, raising concerns under the African Charter and ICCPR Article 19. The proliferation of commercial spyware, biometric national ID systems, and AI-driven content moderation has added new dimensions to debates on privacy, non-discrimination, and due process. The 2024 UN Global Digital Compact and ongoing work of the African Commission's Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression provide reference points for harmonizing standards. The central disputes today concern the legality and proportionality of network disruptions, the scope of permissible restrictions on online speech, state procurement and use of surveillance technologies, cross-border data flows and data localization, and how regional courts — including the ECOWAS Court of Justice, which has repeatedly ruled internet shutdowns unlawful — can enforce digital rights against reluctant states.