Every year, young up and coming lawyers from the various law faculties across Africa get the opportunity to gather in a designated African country to take part in the prestigious and world-recognised African Human Rights Moot Court Competition. This year, the 17th edition was hosted by University of Pretoria to coincide with its centenary celebrations.

In the final round of the competition, the combined team of the University of Ghana Legon (Ghana), Eduardo Mondlane University (Mozambique) and University of Pretoria (South Africa) argued as Applicants against the Respondent team made up of Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis (Sénégal), the University of Lagos (Nigeria) and the Université Mohammed Ier Oujda (Morocco). In the end, the exceptional oratory skills and advocacy finesse displayed by the Applicants won them the trophy.

By this vintage feat, University of Ghana enters the records of the competition as having won the competition on 4 different occasions. This years’ team was represented by Messieurs Kay Amoah and Nii Kpakpo Samoa Addo, both final year students of the Faculty who are graduating to the Ghana Law School in September 2008 for their professional bar course. Both of them were among the best 10 oralists in the Anglophone category. The team was led by their coach, Dr. Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua, a Senior Lecturer at the Law Faculty.

The final round was adjudicated by a panel of international jurists, including Dr Gérard Niyungeko, President of the recently-established African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights who presided, Justice Sanji Monageng, Chairperson of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa Dikgang Moseneke.

In his remarks to the students, Justice Moseneke expressed appreciation for the quality of arguments put up by both teams. He noted that if the future of Africa was in the hands of these young lawyers, we would soon see the end of dictatorship in Africa.

The Moot’s hypothetical case is woven around critical human rights issues rooted in African realities. In this year’s competition, the case dealt issues including the right to emergency obstetric care, the obligation of states to provide Anti-Retroviral Treatment to people living with HIV, and the emerging international ‘right not to be poor’.

With 44 English-language teams, 20 French-language and 7 Portuguese-speaking teams, this event was the largest gathering of African law teachers and law students to be held in South Africa.

The Moot Court Competition is an annual event organised by the Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria. It aims to cultivate a generation of young African lawyers who will seek to adopt a human rights approach to dealing with the Continent’s myriad problems. It is also to build their competence to appear before the newly-established African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. This Court is based in Arusha, Tanzania, and is set to hear its first cases soon. The forum as well offers students and lecturers alike the opportunity to develop networking relationships for future collaborative work in the field of human rights in particular and law in general.