Érudit's RSS Feed

Les principes généraux de droit dans la jurisprudence de la Cour africaine des droits de l’homme et des peuples

Sègnonna Horace Adjolohoun
The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights has contributed in a unique way to the praetorian notoriety of general principles of law. This contribution is threefold: first, the Court has undertaken a decolonization of the principles by deconfining them from norms peculiar to “civilized nations” to principles also “recognized by African nations.” The Court has, moreover, made a double procedural and substantive application of these principles insofar as it has resorted to them both to regulate its procedures and to contextualize universally recognized fundamental guarantees. Finally, without disavowing the “canons” in the matter, the Court has adapted them to the African system of human rights. A case in point is the Court’s recourse to the doctrine of actio popularis to echo the unique recognition of the general interest and community rights in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Nevertheless, the fact — hardly understandable — remains that the Court does not apply (refer to) general principles of law as formulated by African national jurisdictions.

La Cour internationale de justice et le changement climatique : avancée normative ou prudence excessive sur le droit à un environnement sain et le principe de non-refoulement ?

Gabriel Ajabu Mastaki and Giscard Bilingi Kyatenda
This article examines the advisory opinion delivered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 23 July 2025 concerning States’ obligations in the face of climate change. It highlights how the Court articulates the interdependence between environmental protection and human rights, confirming this relationship without, however, expressly recognizing an autonomous right to a healthy environment. The analysis demonstrates that, while the ICJ universalizes standards already established in doctrine, regional jurisprudence and United Nations practice, it adopts a cautious stance by refraining from affirming the customary character of this right. Similarly, in extending the principle of non-refoulement to individuals threatened by the adverse effects of climate change, the Court opens a new avenue of legal protection but provides an incomplete interpretation thereof, limiting its scope to the strict prohibition of return. The article argues that the 2025 advisory opinion constitutes a partial advance: it consolidates sectoral achievements by conferring upon them universal legitimacy yet leaves unresolved important questions regarding the normative reach of State obligations in the context of climate change.

(Re)penser la majorité politique en Afrique

Hervé Aganze Bahati
Most domestic legal systems set the political (electoral) age of majority, i.e. the ability to vote and stand for election, at 18. This threshold is based on the traditional view in political philosophy that individuals under the age of 18 do not have the political maturity necessary to understand the electoral process in all its aspects. This paper proposes to deconstruct this view, demonstrating that it is not adapted to the African reality. Without claiming to be exhaustive, it bases its argument on several reasons, including the constantly growing youth population that characterises Africa and the conception of power in Africa, which is sometimes dictated by its colonial past. Drawing on a number of studies in developmental psychology, the article concludes that the age of 16 seems appropriate for the realities of Africa.

La norme d’intégration dans les chartes constitutives des organisations régionales en Afrique

Brusil Miranda Metou and Luc Sindjoun
The integration norm constitutes one of the structuring pillars of the constituent charters of African regional organizations. Considered as the set of normative prescriptions, both teleological and operational, by which the States Parties express their will to go beyond the classic framework of interstate cooperation to establish a progressive process of regional integration, based on a partial and framed pooling of the exercise of their sovereign powers, this standard has a conceptual flexibility which reveals that integration appears in Africa less as an autonomous legal constraint than as a shared political project, in order to respond to the economic, security and institutional challenges of the African continent. The normative scope of integration remains heterogeneous and variable depending on the organizations involved. While in some regional areas integration tends to produce binding and justiciable legal effects, elsewhere it retains an essentially programmatic nature, subordinate to the political will of states and the gradual nature of its implementation. This normative ambivalence is accentuated by resistance related to the preservation of sovereign prerogatives, the weakness of enforcement mechanisms, and the overlapping of regional institutional frameworks. The integration norm, as established in the constituent charters of African regional organizations, contributes to the construction of a sui generis regional legal order, situated at the interface of classical public international law and community law. It constitutes a key driver for rationalizing African collective action and a central normative instrument in the progressive realization of continental integration.

François Crépeau : un héritage intellectuel et humain au coeur des enjeux contemporains de la migration

Kristine Plouffe-Malette

Hommage au professeur François Crépeau, un bâtisseur, un mentor et une source d’inspiration

Geneviève Dufour

Les droits des migrants : le « Wild West » de la mise en oeuvre des droits de la personne — Réflexions au moment de partir à la retraite / The Rights of Migrants: The ‘Wild West’ of Human Rights Implementation — Reflections Upon Retirement

François Crépeau

Some Reflections on the Future of the Rights of International Migrants

Hélène Pellerin

Défendre les droits de toutes les personnes migrantes : quelques réflexions pour s’attaquer à la hiérarchie des légitimités

Louis-Philippe Jannard

Chronique de jurisprudence québécoise en droit international public 2024

Julien-Manuel Després, Emma Beilouny, Daïna Dumoulin and Kristine Plouffe-Malette

Sundaresh Menon et Anselmo Reyes, dir, Transnational Commercial Disputes in an Age of Anti-Globalism and Pandemic, New York, Hart, 2023

Saf Hakawati

Camille Marquis Bissonnette, Le terme terrorisme et ses incidences sur la protection des personnes en droit international : terrorisme, le mot qui blesse ?, Bruxelles, Bruylant, 2024

Laurence St-Amand

Pauline Pic, Mathieu Landriault, Frédéric Lasserre et Stéphane Roussel, L’Arctique et le système international : sécurité, gouvernance et économie, 1ère éd, Québec, Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2024

Rasha Hamade

Jonathan Kwik, Lawfully Using Autonomous Weapon Technologies, La Haye, TMC Asser Press, 2024

Valentin Laugrand

Bérangère Taxil, Isabelle Fouchard et Coralie Klipfel, dir, Droit international et violences sexuelles dans les conflits armés — Contributions de la Chaire Mukwege (2019-2023), Bayonne, Institut francophone pour la justice et la démocratie, 2024

Laurence Murray

Faits internationaux du Québec 2023

Julien-Manuel Després and Simon Boyle

Faits internationaux du Québec 2024

Simon Boyle