Les relations extérieures de la CEDEAO

The legal inventiveness of contemporary African societies has not received the attention it deserves. A widespread prejudice too often consists in presenting the rules of law as a kind of artifice condemned to oscillate between mimicry and ineffectiveness, between extroversion and disembodiment. To counter this popular misconception, the author gives ten examples, evoking ten themes touching on major legal issues, in which Africa has created, refined, enriched, or sublimated principles or institutions. Ten examples through which, while remaining firmly within the realms of modernity, the African continent can certainly claim a kind of precedence and, perhaps, exemplarity. Firmly rejecting any vertical or monopolistic rationale, the book is based on the conviction that the development of law takes place in a horizontal mode of osmosis, hybridisation, and polycentrism. It is an exhortation to look at what is being done elsewhere, an invitation to listen and to explore new horizons.

Iconolcaste, l'auteur se livre ici à un jeu de massacre des stéréotypes, d'idées reçues et de théories erronées avant d'asséner ses convictions : les langues ne sont pas toutes égales; une langue n'est pas en soi apte à l'enseignement; on enseigne dans "les langues de culture"; nos langues dites nationales ne sont pour le moment pas des langues d'enseignement; il nous faut en attendant d'apprendre, étudier le français sans complexe; le français du Séngal n'existe pas.

La qualité de l'ouvrage est en fait articulée autour de la rigueur de la démarche scientifique de l'auteur. C'est une démarche fondée sur la collecte systématique et l'interprétation méthodique du matériau constituée par les avis et décisions des cours de justice de la CEDEAO et de l'UEMOA. Dès lors, ce qui est écrit procède de l'analyse de la jurisprudence et non de l'imagination de l'auteur. C'est ainsi que les qualifications auxquelles recourt l'auteur sont appropriées : le contentieux de la Cour de Justice de l'UEMOA est considéré comme un contentieux de la fonction publique régionale en raison de la prépondérance des fonctionnaires communautaires dans la population des requérants ; le contentieux de la Cour de Justice de la CEDEAO est présenté comme un contentieux des droits de l'homme du fait de la croissance exponentielle des requêtes fondées sur les violations des droits de l'homme. Extrait de la préface du professeur Luc Sindjoun

Mandated to make judgments on human rights cases since 2005, the ECOWAS Court of Justice has undeniably acquired the reputation of a forum for human rights protection, in the manner of courts of justice as prestigious as the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights or the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights. With no systematic study of the Court's human rights jurisprudence having been undertaken till today, this work comes to fill the gap. Part I of the book presents the body of case law emerging after fifteen years of practice. Two feats must be acknowledged here. The feat of the Court itself, whose original mandate was, and is still in force any rate, that of a custodian of the norms of economic integration, not adjudication on human rights violation. The human rights case law of the Court was therefore born out of a sustained effort, not devoid of approximations and sometimes mistakes, all the more deserving of commendation, because unlike similarjudicial bodies, it had succeeded in ridding itself of what the author calls "a pointer of orientation for the norms relied upon", a single codified body of rules of reference. Then, the exploits of the author, who succeeded, in an effort of re-composition, in sustaining, by a consummate art of summary, a reconstitution of the various phases of the trial proceedings, and in retrieving and discussing in a systematic manner, the viewpoints of the Court. Part II is made up of a collection of studies whose themes centre on the major interrogations of international disputes on human rights : the status of the applicants, relations between the Court and other sister or rival courts of justice, the dialectics of relationship between the national judge and the international judge, etc. Part II closes up with a prospective reflexion on "The Future of the Court", where the author expresses his hopes, but also his serious concerns regarding what is to become of a court whose usefulness and cathartic function are not lost on him. The book is, as always, written in pure delightful language, and the analyses, nourished with the experience of the judge that the author was, are remarkable in richness, finesse and depth.