The Court said there were so many challenges that were preventing the enforcement of its judgments. Approximately 131 judgments out of over 400 judgments delivered by the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice (CCJ) have not been enforced.
The Court said there were so many challenges that were preventing the enforcement of its judgments. Mrs. Oluwatosin Nguher, Senior Research Officer at CCJ, speaking at a sensitisation event for law students at the University of Ghana said there was a lack of political will by member states to enforce these judgments.
The sensitisation formed part of the sustained efforts by the Court to engage with the stakeholders with the specific objective of closing the yawning gap in the knowledge of the Court by Community citizens, including critical stakeholders.
The students and participants were taken through the overview of the CCJ, practices and procedures of the court, including the filing of cases and representation, human rights, and the court’s jurisdiction.
She said the Court as the primary judicial organ of ECOWAS with the mandate to dispense justice in the protection of human rights has a non-peculiar challenge of enforcement of its judgments.
“This is largely because enforcement power is vetted in Member States and not the Court,” she said.
She said Member States and other stakeholders like lawyers, NGOs, Judges and Community Citizens must hold Member States accountable to their international Obligations. Ms Nguher said the ECOWAS court was not in conflict with the domestic courts rather their relationship was complimentary. The Senior Research Officer said there was non-involvement of human rights institutions in the enforcement of these decisions.
“Non-ratification and domestication of protocols of the court is a challenge,” she added. She said more sensitisation needed to be carried out to Member States’ judicial organ to build capacity on Community Laws and the same should be done with the legislature to enable domestication of the Community Laws. He further stressed that low enforcement could make it difficult for citizens of ECOWAS to enjoy the full benefits of the court as envisioned by the ECOWAS treaty.
“We are not talking only in terms of only Ghana, but all the member states that have outstanding judgments yet to be implemented. We are employing all member states to do the needful. If the court does it work by delivering judgments and the judgments are not implemented, it does not give the needed efficacy to the court,” he said.
Justice Edward Amoako Asante, the President of CCJ, said the six-day sensitization campaign was to engage with various stakeholders on various aspects of the Court. He said during the period, the CCJ team interacted with law students, the Office of the Attorney-General and Ministry of Justice and the Ghana Bar Association.
The President said the campaign had three components, mainly media appearances, advocacy, engagement with lawyers and law students, and a stakeholder meeting with a cross-section of community citizens.
Justice Asante said the campaign had been carefully structured to ensure that all segments of the Court’s stakeholders were targeted with appropriate information on the Court, mainly its mandate, jurisdiction, procedures before the court, the enforcement of its decisions, challenges, and relationship with the national courts of the Member States.
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