Human Rights of African Prisoners

Description

African countries suffer from a serious lack in civil rights and public freedoms more than industrial countries do. This lacking, by itself, explains the low levels of reform so far attained in the criminal justice system, in general, and prisons, in particular. In many cases, the state authorities recognized formally some of the internationally-recognized fundamental rights and public freedoms via constitutional or statutory law. Some of this recognition appeared in the prison regulations of a few African nations. The authoritys negation of the right to organize trade unions, professional associations, political parties, or non-governmental human rights organizations, nonetheless, violated grossly the human rights of citizens, especially the powerless groups of prisoners, women and juveniles. Added to the urgent need to fulfill the States Parties obligation to the United Nations humanitarian law and the standard minimum rules for the treatment of offenders, the African penal institutions must be reformed by democratic methods to allow the public at large, as well as policy makers, to implement the best ways possible to reform the criminal justice, crime prevention, and the prison inmates. A full implementation of such programs, however, would be possibly enforceable only within a political and administrative system of rule that would be highly committed to the human rights of citizens, regardless of their penal status, especially the right to life, the civil and political rights, and the other economic, social, and cultural rights.