Social rights in the African system for the protection and promotion of human and peoples rights

This chapter explores the extent to which the norms and institutions of the African regional human rights system have contributed to expand social rights protection. The African Charter has spearheaded the direct justiciability and immediate enforceability of social rights at the regional and international level. The African Commission and African Children’s Rights Committee have developed a progressive jurisprudence based on the indivisibility and interrelatedness of all rights. The African Court has also slowly forged a social rights related jurisprudence, even though only few cases have reached this body. The Commission has established a Working Group dedicated to social rights, and supported the adoption of further treaties and soft law standards dealing with social rights. Despite these advances, the treaty bodies remain in search of a clear and coherent approach to positive obligations attached to social rights in resource-constrained contexts, and finding a balance to reconcile progressive realization, minimum core obligations and the needs of the most vulnerable groups. The actual benefits of the advances have not reached Africa’s poor, due largely to the lack of dissemination and effective implementation of remedial recommendations in decided cases.