The ECOWAS Court of Justice in Abuja, Nigeria, has become West Africans’ preferred forum for human rights lawsuits against their governments, research on its evolution since its 2005 human rights mandate shows.
Nearly 90% of the hundreds of cases brought before the court since then have concerned human rights, even though it was initially created to handle economic matters related to the ECOWAS Treaty.
The court today serves the Economic Community of West African States, which has 12 member states.
In a recent work, Maame Efua Addadzi-Koom, a specialist in international law and human rights, argues that the evolution of the court’s mandate has made it an accessible forum for advancing women’s rights.
Some of its landmark decisions have challenged discrimination and violence against women.
Why is this court so important for women’s rights in West Africa?
One of the main attractions of the ECOWAS Court lies in its accessibility: complainants are not required to exhaust all available judicial remedies in their country before they can bring a case before the court.
This is not the case before other regional tribunals on the continent. This accessibility has been reinforced by the introduction of electronic filing systems for applications and case management.
What important decisions has it rendered concerning women’s rights?
The court has rendered important decisions in areas such as marriage, widowhood, domestic violence, employment, education, culture and conflict situations. One example is the decision rendered in 2019 in the so-called “Waves” case.
This was a public interest action brought against Sierra Leone, in which a non-governmental organization filed a case on behalf of approximately 3,000 pregnant students.
Sierra Leone had banned pregnant students from attending regular schools and offered them a lower-quality education in “alternative” schools. Waves argued that this system deprived young girls of equal access to education because of their pregnancy.
The court ordered Sierra Leone to lift the ban and close the alternative schools.
To what extent are its decisions enforceable?
The court strives to improve the enforcement of its decisions. It has an enforcement plan: member states must establish a national authority responsible for receiving and executing the court’s decisions.
Not all member states have yet done so. Eight of the twelve ECOWAS member states have not yet complied with this agreement.
Even among the countries that have established a national authority, data show that some have the highest number of unexecuted judgments. Nigeria, where the ECOWAS Court of Justice sits, is one example.
That said, there are cases where decisions are partially executed. The Waves case is one example.
Addadzi-Koom attributes Sierra Leone’s partial implementation of the decision to the public interest nature of the case, which led to systemic reparations — that is, the correction of systemic failures in the country — rather than monetary reparations, in the form of compensation for individual victims, as well as to the publicity generated by this type of litigation.
What weaknesses remain to be addressed?
One gap identified in the book is the uncertainty surrounding the financial compensation awarded by the court in cases relating to women’s rights.
It is one thing for women to obtain a favorable judicial decision finding that their rights have been violated, but it is another not to know what “amount” the court will award them as compensation.
This “amount” is equally important, and the lack of uniformity reduces predictability, which is essential to effective compensation.
Addadzi-Koom also notes that the ECOWAS Court only very rarely refers to the Maputo Protocol in most of its decisions relating to women’s rights. The 2025 case constitutes an exception.
The Maputo Protocol is a regional instrument dedicated to women’s rights, adopted in 2003. It is the first regional human rights treaty specifically dedicated to women’s rights.
In most of the decisions analyzed in the book, the court mentions the Maputo Protocol only briefly and does not examine it in depth.
This is concerning because, among international human rights instruments relating to women, the Maputo Protocol is the one most suited to African women and girls, due to its comprehensive scope and its distinctive nature.
If it is not used, its impact is diminished.
How can the Court advance women’s rights in the region?
The ECOWAS Court is already doing excellent work to advance women’s rights in the region, but its action would be even more transformative if it developed a uniform framework for financial compensation and relied more heavily on the Maputo Protocol, according to the research.
Public interest actions constitute another pathway for bringing the ECOWAS Court to render systemic and transformative decisions. But the initiative must come from the lawyers who bring cases before the court, and not from the court itself.
What future for women’s rights in the region?
ECOWAS has established itself as a fair and receptive regional jurisdiction, where women can be certain that they will obtain justice, even if their own states do not grant it to them, the research concludes.
The range of women’s rights issues addressed by the court continues to expand.
Addadzi-Koom writes that she looks forward to seeing how the court will address, in the future, a case of technology-facilitated gender-based violence when one is brought before it.
This is an emerging form of gender-based violence that is committed, facilitated, aggravated or amplified, in whole or in part, with the use of technological platforms and other digital media or tools.
Women are particularly affected by this type of violence. It is estimated that by 2026, 75% of women worldwide will have been victims of it.
Consequently, a decision by the ECOWAS Court on this issue would help to clarify women’s right not to be subjected to online violence.
Source: The Conversation
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