Make African court more visible: call

Arusha. The media has been challenged to give more visibility to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AfCHPR) and human rights issues at large.

“Being the host country, the local media should take the lead in extensively reporting on the court and increase awareness to the general public in Tanzania and beyond its borders,” said the newly elected President of the Court Justice Sylvain Ore on Thursday.

He made the remarks during brief discussions with Dr Jim Yonazi the Managing Editor of Daily News who doubles as CEO of the government-owned Tanzania Standard Newspapers Limited during the latter’s visit to the court.

Justice Ore said Tanzania should be proud to host the African Court, a judicial organ of the African Union which relocated its headquarters in Arusha in 2007, three years after the protocol that established it became operational. “We normally get coverage from outside Africa when our own media could report better and more objectively and in line with Africa’s desire for peaceful and democratic continent,” he said.

He assured that under his tenure as the President of the Court he would extend our full cooperation to the media in Tanzania which he described as a peaceful country befitting the host of such a sensitive organ.

Justice Ore, from Ivory Coast, was elected AfCHPR President on September 5 to succeed Judge Augustino Ramadhani from Tanzania who served from 2014 in that capacity and from 2010 as a Judge of the Court.

Dr Robert Eno, the Registrar of the Court, said it was pity that the court was not even much known in its host city Arusha and Tanzania in general and called on the media to sensitise the public not only on its activities but on human rights issues.

Dr Yonazi, who became the first CEO of a local media house to visit the court, said TSN was committed to informing Tanzanians about the institution and its mission. “We have to inform the public on what the court is doing in pushing on the human rights agenda and fight for democracy in the society,” he told reporters here. Upon being elected President of the Court 18 days ago, Justice Ore said he would traverse the entire African continent to make it much known.

However, he played down perception that the judicial organ was being shunned by many countries with poor records of human rights. “Do not emphasise too much on the reluctance of the African states to ratify on the protocol (that established the court). In the last six years alone, we have received 126 applications against only one between 2002 and 2010,” he told The Citizen.