ABSTRACT
Africa is one of three regions where international law provides for participatory rights in environmental matters through a combination of environmental treaties and human rights regimes. Compared to the legal frameworks of Europe and Latin America, the African treaty regimes are much less detailed on what the rights to access to information, public participation, and access to justice in environmental matters imply. The African Commission and Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights confirm that the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights bestow participatory rights in environmental matters to individuals and peoples, but the jurisprudence is surprisingly limited and does not clarify what these rights amount to. While the revised African Convention on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (Maputo Convention) affirms the rights to access to information, public participation, and access to justice in environmental contexts, it has no effective institutional backing, and appears as a “sleeping treaty.” For the participatory rights in the African Charter and Maputo Convention to be powerful tools to protect the environment and not “sleeping rights,” they must be invoked, claimed, and enforced in practice.
