The African Human Rights and Transitional Justice Architecture: An Analytical Outline

The critical drivers and triggers of conflicts on the African continent include legitimate governance deficits, human rights violations, and a lack of respect for the rule of law and constitutionalism. This chapter discusses the African human rights system and delineates the broad framework of that system as relevant to the objectives of transitional justice. Next, the chapter surveys the contours of the institutional landscape of transitional justice in Africa, drawing attention to the various forms and approaches adopted to offer redress for human rights abuses and violations in the transitional justice context. Third, the chapter analyzes the relative strengths and weaknesses of the African human rights and transitional justice architecture that has been discussed in the previous sections. The concluding section reflects on the prospects for strengthening human rights and transitional justice in Africa.