Call for dedicated body to protect Africa’s judges

A prominent human rights lawyer and legal academic says a new body should be set up by the African Union, to focus on protecting the continent’s judges. Justice Mavedzenge, a legal academic and human rights lawyer working in Zimbabwe and SA, says attacks on judges affect not just constitutional values. These attacks also affect the judges themselves, and their families and, ultimately, the rights of the entire population. He argues that such a body should be specifically dedicated to dealing with complaints of attacks on and ‘persecution’ of judges, and that it should have the power to make binding decisions, reports Carmel Rickard in her A Matter of Justice column on the Legalbrief site.