HRDA - Alumni
HRDA Alumni News
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On 8 December 2019, following an Alumni Symposium held at the University of Pretoria's Future Africa Campus, the Centre for…
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This publication commemorates 18 years of the Master’s programme in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa (HRDA). It gives a…
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On 9 December 2011, the Alumni Association welcomes 30 new members who will be awarded the LLM in Human Rights…
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Issues of the Alumni Newsletter provide more comprehensive reports on various engagements of alumni in the field. Righting Wrongs: Alumni Newsletter
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The Centre for Human Rights has learned with alarm of the arrest and continued detention of a prominent Swazi human…
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In April this year, global outrage rang heavily when over 200 girls were abducted in Chibok, Nigeria by the extremist Boko Haram sect. Placards with internet-tags saying ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ from the streets of Abuja to the Red Carpet in Hollywood saturated the internet. The movement was feisty. The campaign was unwavering enough to touch a nerve with political figures.
In no time… Governments sprang to action! The beauty of international cooperation flustered! Accountability was suddenly not an illusion! Political will sailed on the mast of reality! Human rights became a movement! But in the beginning, it was not so. Boko Haram had killed scores of individuals, bombed various places including the United Nations building and international outrage was not of the same magnitude as when Chibok girls were abducted.
What happened differently? Thoughts may vary. Answers may differ. But one thing is clear: some people demanded that the girls must be brought back!
(Excerpt from the Editorial)
Download Issue No 10 - October 2014The Moot in Nairobi was a week-long event to remember. It was my first time in Kenya, a country much famed as one of the powerhouses of East Africa.
I do not recall at which point I fell in love with Kenya but I must say that I fell hard. Not only did it remind me of Lagos with the traffic and the organized chaos but it also gave me a reason, lots of reasons, in fact, to smile.
The University of Nairobi along with our Alma Mater hosted a brilliant moot court competition. And the icing on the cake to this wonderful experience was meeting the Kenyan alumni.
(Excerpt from the Editorial)
It has been a pleasure leading our association and I thank you for your cooperation. I thank you for the support I have received from you and I thank you for the experiences we have shared together.
I am grateful to have known you, to have sent you emails and to have received your responses. I am indeed proud that our association has grown and now we are a network of over 400 alumni from 36 African countries, Spain and the United States of America.
In this farewell, I will like to remind you of the goal ahead of us. The goal to see an Africa that respects human rights and embraces democracy.
When I think of Africa, I think of a continent that needs to breathe more with the lungs of wise people and think more with the heads of good women and men.
(Excerpt from the Editorial)
For those of us who are in the academia, I would like to share my relative disappointment about the still fair level of knowledge of the African human rights system among young law graduates in our universities.
As I marked some memorials and attended oral pleadings of some teams during the 21st African human rights moot court competition that just took place in Maputo, Mozambique, I noticed a lack of knowledge of the African human rights system, of its law and jurisprudence.
(Excerpt from the Editorial)
While launching this newsletter in August this year, I was convinced, just as many of you, that it would eventually become the centrepiece of the Alumni Association’s work.
As you will notice in this third issue, the Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa Alumni Newsletter is not only growing in substance but also heading in the right direction. Contributions published in this issue effectively feature our newsletter as a communication channel, an advocacy tool and a miniature academic reservoir.
