International Human Rights

The News and Events category publishes the latest News and Events relating to International Economic Law relating to Africa and the Global South. Every week, Afronomicslaw.org receive the News and Events in their e-mail accounts. The News and Events published every week include conferences, major developments in the field of International Economic Law in Africa at the national, sub-regional and regional levels as well as relevant case law. News and Events with a Global South focus are also often included.

In this post, the author highlights the contributions of Cançado Trindade as a judge and academic. While discussing his work as a judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the International Court of Justice, the author highlights his efforts to transform procedural and substantive norms as tools, not barriers, for victims to access Justice.

Judge Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade was a towering figure of contemporary international and public law. An internationally renowned jurist, he was judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights between 1995 and 2008 and its President between 1999 and 2004. In February 2009, he was elected as judge of the International Court of Justice, a position he held until his passing in May 2022. This symposium has been organized to honour the memory of Judge Trindade by engaging with his legacy and ideas.

The Promise Institute for Human Rights is proud to be at the forefront of critical thinking about the role of human rights in achieving racial justice and equality. Bringing together our expertise in human rights, Critical Race Theory, and Third World Approaches to International Law, we strive to uncover how race and empire operate within the international human rights system, while exploring the potential of law to dismantle national and trans-national structures of racial and colonial subordination.

Most of DSTs significant propositions are based on several grounds, including the goal of having businesses and corporations, especially multinational corporations (MNCs) pay their due share on taxes, taxing profits derived from consumers activities in their territory, or adapting traditional regulations and systems of international taxation to guide and inform new forms of unsettling business models that can be conducted virtually. This is following the debate that digital firms are undertaxed.

The African Society of International Law (AfSIL) held its 9th Annual Conference on Africa and COVID-19 virtually, on 30 October 2020. AfSIL aims inter alia to promote international law on the continent and to contribute to the development of an international law that expresses the point of view of African States and specialists. The Conference was sponsored by law firms Foley Hoag LLP, Shikana Law Group and Asafo & Co.

At the heart of African decolonization was radical political thinking about international non-domination, and the vision of an international legal, political and economic order that secured this anti-imperialism through global redistribution. This idea of the world, that involved radical reinterpretation of the principle of self-determination, united the political thinking of the tallest leaders of Africa – Azikiwe, Nkrumah, Nyerere, and others.

The Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Gl-ESCR) is a non- governmental organisation that believes transformative change to end endemic problems of social and economic injustice is possible through a human rights lens.

The dire situation caused by COVID-19 has led governments to explore options for various alternatives to control its spread. Alongside other measures, states across the globe, including some African nations, are introducing contact-tracing through mobile/smartphone apps. This is particularly so in South Korea, Taiwan, China and Singapore East and Southeast Asian countries. Europe and the US are also considering the alternative.

This symposium presents two interesting memoirs of African students who have participated in these moots and have chosen paths of graduate studies that are related to international economic law and development studies. Mr Mishael Wambua a student at Strathmore University Law and last year winner and best oralist at the John H. Jackson writes about his experience and advice to future mooters. Ms Purity Maritim a former participant of the same moot and now a masters student at the Graduate Institute in Geneva also writes about her experiences and what she learnt from the moot. The other two contributions are from Mr Christian Campbell the Assistant Director FDI moot and Tsotang Tsietsi lecturer and moot coach from the National University of Lesotho. These two contributions present two interesting perspectives on the many directions that moot court competitions can take for Africa in the near future.