Addendum - Call for Papers, Volume 5

Kabarak Law Review therefore invites scholarly contributions responding to our dual
theme this year interrogating the right to development and the theses of Mamdani’s
Citizen and subject, and especially how these two themes have been pronounced on by
the 20 year old African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

The developing Right to Development?
The Right to Development occupies a unique and contested position within African
human rights discourse. Article 22 of the Charter provides that:

1. All peoples have the right to their economic, social and cultural development
with due regard to their freedom and identity and in the equal enjoyment of the
common heritage of mankind.
2. States shall have the duty, individually and collectively, to ensure the exercise
of the right to development.
From this provision it may be imperative to interact with the words of Walter Rodney on
what constitutes development. Rodney opines that ‘Underdevelopment is not absence of
development, because every people have developed in one way or another and to a greater
or lesser extent’.

Walter Rodney’s formulation invites a reconsideration of development not merely as economic
progress, but as a political and historical process shaped by exclusion and domination.

In this regard, the African Charter’s prescription and Court’s jurisprudence on the right
to development may be understood not only as an instrument of rights protection, but
also as part of a broader struggle against enduring structures of marginalisation inherited
from colonial governance.

The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the bifurcated state
The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights pronouncements jurisprudence cannot
be alienated from the vagaries of the African post-colonial state. Mahmood Mamdani –
in his seminal Citizen and subject, which marks 30 years since its publication in 1996 –
argues that colonial governance in Africa produced a dual system of power characterised
by centralised citizenship for some and decentralised exclusion for others. This has been
especially evident in the African post-colonial lived realities. Although, colonialism ended, many of these structures continue to shape governance, participation, and access
to justice within contemporary African countries.

Contributors are encouraged to critically interrogate whether the jurisprudence of the
African Court has disrupted or reproduced these inherited patterns of exclusion. To what
extent can regional human rights adjudication transform the material realities of
development in societies still marked by uneven citizenship and structural inequality?

The sub-themes of the 2026 focus on this milestone include:
1. Has twenty years of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights meaningfully
transformed human rights protection in Africa?
2. Does the Right to Development under Article 22 of the African Charter on Human
and Peoples' Rights constitute a justiciable right or remain a normative aspiration?
3. To what extent has the Court’s jurisprudence addressed the gap between rights
recognition and state compliance?

____
1. Does Mahmood Mamdani’s bifurcated state still accurately describe contemporary
African human rights structures?
2. In what ways, if any, does regional human rights adjudication challenge or
reproduce colonial governance logics?

3. Can human rights courts meaningfully transform categories of citizenship,
especially in relation to electoral law and the enjoyment of civil and political rights?

Submission guidelines

• All contributions must be the original work of the author(s) and must not have
  been submitted to any other publication for consideration.
• Only natural persons may be designated as authors. AI tools may not be
  credited as authors or co-authors. AI outputs cannot be submitted as original
  research.
• Kabarak Law Review is committed to promoting indigenous knowledge
  production and promote equitable knowledge production. The Editorial Board
  encourages authors to proactively incorporate diverse works with a view to
  expand our knowledge base, and especially from Global Majority thinkers, and
  those written in languages other than English, where possible.
• All submissions should be sent through the Online Journal System (OJS)
  accessible here please contact the Editor-in-Chief in case of any inquiries
  <https://journals.kabarak.ac.ke/index.php/klr/about/submissions>.
• The authors should adhere to the Kabarak Legal Citation Guide (KALCI)
  accessible here <https://kabarak.ac.ke/kalci>.
•  Deadline for submission of original articles is midnight 31 July 2026. Please
  feel free to contact the Editorial Board to clarify any queries you may have on
  this Call for Papers at email <kabaraklawreview@kabarak.ac.ke>.
• Submissions will undergo a rigorous double-blind peer review.
• Authors are expected to incorporate the review comments, where necessary,
  and submit the revised paper by 31 September 2026. Only the accepted
  papers at this stage will be published.