African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights

The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, also known as the Banjul Charter, is an international human rights instrument intended to promote and protect human rights and basic freedoms on the African continent. It emerged from a 1979 resolution of the Organisation of African Unity calling for a committee of experts to draft a continent-wide human rights instrument similar to those already existing in Europe and the Americas, was unanimously approved at the OAU's 18th Assembly in Nairobi in June 1981, and came into effect on 21 October 1986. Oversight and interpretation rest with the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, established in Addis Ababa in 1987 and now headquartered in Banjul, Gambia, and a 1998 protocol created the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, which came into effect in 2004; as of 2019, 53 states had ratified the Charter.