African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights

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The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) is a quasi-judicial body tasked with promoting and protecting human rights and collective (peoples') rights throughout the African continent as well as interpreting the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (also known as the Banjul Charter or the African Charter) and considering individual complaints of violations of the Charter. This includes investigating human rights violations, creating and approving programs of action towards encouraging human rights, and set up effect communication between them and states to get first hand information on violations of human rights.^[1] Although the ACHPR is under a regional government facility, they don't have any actual power and enforcement over laws. This ends up in them drafting up proposals to send up the chain of command to the Assembly of Heads of State and Government and they will act accordingly.^[2]

ACHPR was based on the African Charter which is the regional human rights protectors of human rights for Africa. The charter has twenty-nine articles that go into great detail on the rights and freedoms that follow a strict code of non-discrimination.^[3] The support and excitement over the Europeans current rights system, the evolution of granting everyone human rights, is what helped streamline the creation of this commission and other courts in Africa.^{[citation needed]} The Commission came into existence with the coming into force, on 21 October 1986, of the African Charter (adopted by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) on 27 June 1981). Although its authority rests on the African Charter, the Commission reports to the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (formerly the OAU). Its first members were elected by the OAU's 23rd Assembly of Heads of State and Government in June 1987 and the Commission was formally installed for the first time on 2 November of that year. For the first two years of its existence, the Commission was based at the OAU Secretariat in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, but in November 1989, it relocated to Banjul, Gambia. The ACHPR is not the African Union Commission, which was formerly known as the OAU Secretariat.

In 2019, the ACHPR and UN Human Rights Office signed a Memorandum of Understanding to cooperate on the ACHPR's mandate in the African Charter.^[4]

The Commission meets twice a year, usually in March or April and in October or November. One of these meetings is usually held in Banjul, where the Commission's secretariat is located; the others may take place in any African state.