The African Commission on Human and People’s Rights was established in 1987 as a quasi-judicial body charged with the promotion and protection of human rights in Africa as outlined in the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights. Since that time, the commission has developed a broad range of practices and subunits to execute its mandate, such as resolutions, working groups, special rapporteurs, country visits, and state reports. Despite the political and symbolic importance of having an African institution to consider African problems, however, the effectiveness of the commission’s work has been challenged by lack of funding and political support from African states and a complicated relationship with the African Union, the United Nations, the African Court on Human and People’s Rights, national human rights commissions, and NGOs and CSOs.

In this book, Rachel Murray and Debra Long draw on four years of research (primarily document reviews and interviews) to examine how these and other challenges have influenced (and often undermined) the effective implementation of the commission’s findings. Their conclusions—that political and legal contexts, insufficient resources, confused procedures, conflicting mandates, internal inconsistencies, and other problems have hampered the efficacy and visibility of the Commission—are thoroughly supported by their research, if unsurprising. The power of the book to shape broader scholarly and policy debates is limited, however, by its language (“legalese”), structure (important insights are buried in plodding prose), and narrow focus on the question of how implementation of the commission’s findings has been limited, rather than why. NGOs and other advocacy groups have been central to the development and sustenance of the commission—why? Many states have indirectly and often directly challenged the reach and findings of the Commission—why? These and other questions should have led the authors to a far more critical, nuanced approach to their topic (and thus their analysis of interviews and documents), one that takes seriously the politics of the very existence of the commission as a dynamic site for contestations among states, representatives of civil society, advocacy organizations, and other local, national, and international institutions.