By Jason Eligh   

Globally, support for drug policy reform has grown over the past 10 years. Even as the drug prohibition consensus-keepers in Vienna have voted for yet another 10-year extension to their still unsuccessful 20- year strategy for global drug control at the March 2019 Commission on Narcotic Drugs High Level Review meeting, a reform movement among global member states has been gaining credibility and strength. The United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS) meeting of member states in New York in 2016 was a soft watershed moment in the history of global drug policy. It was significant in its revelation that the global consensus on drug prohibition that had existed for 55 years now appears to be an openly fractured and vulnerable accord, one that was – and continues to be in a state of flux. UNGASS 2016 demonstrated that political space had opened for regional and national reflections on the nature of illicit drugs and countries’ domestic responses. By extension, the fragmenting of global drug policy’s ‘Vienna Consensus’ has also provided an opportunity for Africa. The continent could unify and play a leading role in shaping and implementing a new international drug policy approach. Such an approach could be grounded in the human rights, health and social development objectives of its continental Agenda 2030 goal of sustainable development, within the wider context of its Agenda 2063 goal of ‘an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa’.1 The purpose of this report is to reflect on the changing drug policy environment in Africa, particularly in the period leading up to and after the seminal UNGASS 2016 meeting of member states. It also examines the politics of continental drug policy prohibition and reform in the context of the growing global movement to embrace drug policy alternatives to the once universal approach of strict prohibition. Observations and recommendations are made regarding incorporating drug policy reform in the context of achieving developmental success with respect to the continental Agenda 2030 and Agenda 2063 goals  

ENACT (ENACT is implemented by the Institute for Security Studies in partnership with INTERPOL and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.)2019. 76p.

Edited by Annie Barbara Chikwanha

In Africa, criminal justice systems remain rather fragile. This is not only because of the human rights practices of some African governments, but because the changes on the continent demand good governance and democracy. Criminal justice cannot be separated from democracy inasmuch as its effective implementation has become a barometer of democratic practices throughout the developed world. Africa`s deficiencies in the criminal justice system can benefit from a comprehensive scrutiny not just of the technical legal issues, but of the ethical issues too, as well as the dissection of international norms, institutions and criminal justice processes and their relevance for Africa. This monograph undoubtedly makes a significant contribution to the fledgling criminological writings on the African continent and all the articles reveal the challenges the criminal justice systems in Africa have to overcome in order to fulfill their commitments to international standards and norms.

Pretoria, South Africa: Institute of Security Studies, 2009. 124p.

Edited by J. Jrpa Dawuni.

Selected Studies. Women judges are playing increasingly prominent roles in many African judiciaries, yet there remains very little comparative research on the subject. Drawing on extensive cross-national data and theoretical and empirical analysis, this book provides a timely and broad-ranging assessment of gender and judging in African judiciaries. Employing different theoretical approaches, the book investigates how women have fared within domestic African judiciaries as both actors and litigants. It explores how women negotiate multiple hierarchies to access the judiciary, and how gender-related issues are handled in courts. The chapters in the book provide policy, theoretical and practical prescriptions to the challenges identified, and offer recommendations for the future directions of gender and judging in the post-COVID-19 era, including the role of technology, artificial intelligence, social media, and institutional transformations that can help promote women’s rights. Bringing together specific cases from Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia, Tanzania, and South Africa and regional bodies such as ECOWAS and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and covering a broad range of thematic reflections, this book will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners of African law, judicial politics, judicial training, and gender studies. It will also be useful to bilateral and multilateral donor institutions financing gender-sensitive judicial reform programs, particularly in Africa.

London; New York: Routledge, 2022. 346p.