One could hardly think of a better way to advance the cause of human rights than to bring together students - who are the leaders, judges and teachers of tomorrow - from different countries, with chief justices and professors, to debate some of the crucial issues of our time in the exciting and challenging atmosphere of a courtroom, where they can test their arguments and skills against one another in a spirit of fierce but friendly competition.
— Nelson Mandela,
Statesman, Nobel laureate and former president of the Republic of South Africa[1]
TheAfrican Human Rights Moot Court Competition is an internationalmoot court competition with a special focus on human rights in Africa. The competition is organised by theCentre for Human Rights, based at theUniversity of Pretoria Faculty of Law in South Africa. Each year, the competition is hosted by a Law Faculty from a different African country. Since its inception in 1992, the competition has had 845 participant teams originating from 125 universities from 45 African countries.[2]
The competition is tri-lingual and preliminary rounds are argued in English, French and Portuguese. Students argue a hypothetical human rights case and base their arguments on the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. The final round is argued by two teams made up of the best three Anglophone teams, two Francophone teams and one Lusophone team. The final round is judged by prominent African and international jurists.
The African Human Rights Moot Court has been described as the largest gathering of law students and lecturers on the African continent. The Centre for Human Rights was awarded theUNESCO Prize for Human Rights Education in 2006[3] and the African Human Rights Moot Court received a special mention as it is one of the flagship programmes of the Centre.
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