The African charter: words are not enough

The past 10 years have witnessed some of the most serious human rights violations on the African continent: civil strife in Somalia, genocide in Rwanda, killings by government troops and armed opposition in Algeria, and the worsening human rights situation in Nigeria, to cite just a few situations. This decade has also been marked by an improvement in human rights in a few countries: improvements associated with the independence of Namibia, the end of the civil war in Mozambique, political changes in Uganda and the end of apartheid in South Africa, are a few examples.