The 2026 Ulysses and Marguerite Memorial Schwartz Lecture drew an overflowing crowd of students on April 21 to hear from Justice Ben Kioko, former judge and vice president of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

Tom Ginsburg, the Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Professor of International Law and the Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Research Scholar, moderated the insightful conversation that delved into the evolution of the African human rights system and its future.

Dean Adam Chilton opened the event by honoring the legacy of Judge Schwartz, a 1917 UChicago Law graduate, who, alongside his wife Marguerite, was a longtime supporter of the Law School. The annual lecture, established in 1974 by Schwartz’s family, brings distinguished legal thinkers and practitioners to the Law School each year, from US Supreme Court justices to global legal luminaries.

Kioko, widely regarded as a founding architect of the African Court, played a central role in strengthening inter-court dialogue with regional and international human rights tribunals, accelerating case management reforms, and expanding institutional cooperation across the African Union and beyond. Prior to joining the Court, he was the longest-serving legal counsel of the African Union. In 2024, he received the American Society of International Law’s Honorary Member Award in recognition of his distinguished contributions to international law.

“Justice Kioko is the person more responsible than anyone for setting up and establishing the African system of human rights,” Ginsburg said at the start of the talk. “The designation you’ve heard—African Human and Peoples’ Rights—is a novel feature of the African system.” 

Kioko traced his path from Kenya School of Law to the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the precursor to the African Union after a serendipitous invitation. “When I left law school, I joined government as a legal officer and worked briefly in the attorney general’s chambers,” he recalled. “Then I moved briefly to private practice during which I joined as a member of a charitable organization called Round Tables International. During that time, we organized a trip to Ethiopia to raise money for children [there]. It was there that I met someone who encouraged me to apply to the join the OAU.” 

The justice recounted his work in the transformation of the OAU to the Union and his role in drafting and advocating for the creation of the Court—a vision first articulated in the early 1960s but realized decades later.

“It’s important to underline,” Kioko said, “that even though the member states accepted the idea of an African Court when it was presented, they were not ready to provide funding to carry the process forward. Therefore, we had to collaborate with organizations and NGOs outside of the AU itself that organized the funding, under the progressive leadership of then OAU Secretary General, Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim.”

A central theme of the conversation was the unique structure of the African Court. Unlike its European and American counterparts, the African Court interprets rights under both the African Charter and any human rights treaty ratified by member countries, casting a wide net over issues including environmental protection, statelessness, electoral fairness, and women’s rights. This gives the court a unique power and flexibility, Justice Kioko noted.

However, access remains a major challenge. Currently, only eight out of the 34 states that are parties to the Protocol establishing the Court allow citizens and NGOs to bring cases directly to the Court out of 55 African Union member states. 

Kioko explained that this barrier stems from the way the Court’s founding Protocol was drafted and adopted by African Union member states. An article in the draft stipulates that cases can only be brought to the Court if a country has submitted a special declaration accepting the Court’s jurisdiction for such cases.

Another big challenge is implementation, Kioko said. “You can adopt a very beautiful instrument, but if you don’t implement it, you are probably going to be where you started.” 

Kioko detailed the Court’s struggle to secure compliance with its judgments and its efforts to collaborate with regional institutions. “Every year we organize meetings between the African Court and other human rights courts to understand each other’s jurisprudence; we want to avoid situations where different courts issue totally contrasting judgments.”

Ginsburg pointed out the disproportionately young population of the African continent—over 70% are under the age of 35—and asked how this “youth issue” affects governance.  

“The young population is both a challenge and an opportunity,” Kioko said. “I think some of the problems we are witnessing on the continent will be sorted out by the youth, through their energies and agitation. We’ve noticed youth unexpectedly taking to the streets to advocate for changes—and I see a situation where leadership will be pushed to do what must be done.” 

He further emphasized that although Africa was more than three times bigger than the USA in area, according to the African Development Bank, Africa’s population (presently approximately 1.58 billion compared with India’s 1.48 billion), is projected to grow to approximately 2.5 billion people—accounting for roughly 1 in 4 people worldwide. This presents the challenge, Kioko said, which the African Development Bank also notes, of feeding the bulging population and finding jobs for youth.

In the lively Q&A, students asked Kioko about the Court’s process for applying international instruments, the exhaustion of local remedies, and the prospect of the Court gaining criminal jurisdiction akin to the International Criminal Court. 

Ginsburg also reflected on the importance of having an external review: “This function of serving as a place outside the country, where people can go to call attention to abuses—has been very important in constraining governments, preventing them from doing even worse repression in the electoral sphere,” he said.

“Even if the judgment is not implemented,” Kioko said, “the matter becomes public knowledge and is out there. Being named and shamed has an impact.”

Kioko also emphasized that the African Court is not a court of appeal—that cases can only be brought forward after they have gone through the highest court in a land. “It’s basically to say that the process that was used to determine your matter was flawed,” he said, adding that despite the challenges, the Court’s growing influence can be seen in the way its decisions are being increasingly cited in national courts.

Closing the talk, Ginsburg observed that a unique attribute of the Court is that it concerns human “and peoples’” rights. He asked Kioko to comment on why the addition of “peoples’” is important and what it means.

Kioko explained that the African Charter on Human & Peoples’ Rights, established in 1981, was the first international human rights instrument to recognize peoples’ rights, the right to development “as well as duties viz a viz rights.”

He added: “Most other instruments tend to put emphasis on the individual. But the idea of peoples’ rights is about the collective—the third-generation rights. There are certain issues that don’t belong to one person. When you talk about the environment, for example, it’s no longer an issue of me and I, it’s all of us.”