African Commission on Human and People's Rights

Since the MV Wakashio ship ran aground on 25 July this year, Mauritius has been facing an unfolding human and environmental disaster. Up to 100,000 Mauritians took to the streets in late August to protest against the State’s handling of the disaster, one of the largest protests in the country in over 40 years. In this post we explore the potential for Mauritians to use the African human rights system to address the State’s handling of the oil spill, and whether the acts and omissions of Mauritius potentially violated the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Charter), which includes environmental rights. Such a route may be underexplored but it is not without precedent. This post will review the occurrence of ‘Judicial environmentalism’ before Africa’s Regional Economic Community (REC) Courts and two of the main bodies in the African human rights system: the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Commission), and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Court). Context There were thousands…