Posted: 20 November, 2025 Filed under: Carolyn W. Gatonye | Tags: cited torture, civil war, crimes against humanity, EAC, East Africa, East African Court of Justice, enforced disappearance, fundamental freedoms violation, gender equity, harassment, human dignity, human rights defenders, human rights violations, jurisdiction, jurisprudence, political sensitivities, rising repression, silence of justice, unlawful arrests, unlawful imprisonment
Author: Carolyn W. Gatonye
Kabarak University
The silence of the East African Community (EAC) in the face of rising repression in Tanzania is deafening. Yet, this is hardly new thunder in the EAC bloc. Time and again, the region has watched storms gather over its neighbors; tremble, then retreat. Its response to human rights violations has slowly been morphing into a modern norm, where crises within partner states are met with studied indifference. No meaningful condemnation, no show of solidarity with those whose rights are violated, just mere silence, setting a dangerous precedent that suggests member states may violate fundamental freedoms without fear of regional scrutiny. It’s from this refusal to speak out, that the EAC risks complicity in the very injustices its Treaty seeks to prevent.
In Sudan, civil war rages on, displacing millions while regional leaders continue to ignore the violations of human rights. In the Congo, a UN report found that continuing atrocities may amount to crimes against humanity. Kenya also endured its share of human rights violations amid police brutality last year, when the streets of Nairobi ran with the tears and blood of protesters that demanded economic justice. In Uganda, opposition leader Kizya Besigye, who was abducted in Kenya and repatriated to Uganda, now languishes in detention as President Yoweri Museveni, unbowed by time or public fatigue, prepares to run for a seventh term in the presidential elections slated for January 2026. Under President Samia Suluhu Hassan, once revered as a beacon of hope for democratic renewal and gender equity, Tanzania now appears to be sliding into an era of shrinking civic space. Reports of journalists being harassed, opposition leaders detained, and dissent systematically silenced continue to surface, all under the gaze of a regional bloc that drapes itself in the banner of being “people-centered.”
The unification of East African states in the late 1960s marked the beginning of a shared vision in a visibly divided continent that was struggling to find its footing after decades of colonial rule. From the outset, the East African Community (EAC) Treaty envisioned cooperation across economic, social, and political spheres as a pathway to improving living standards and advancing toward a continental union. To bring this vision to life, it established various organs and institutions, including the East African Court of Justice (EACJ), mandated to ensure adherence to the law in the interpretation and application of the Treaty. Central to this vision, was the promotion and protection of human and peoples’ rights; a quiet acknowledgment that integration must ultimately serve the people it seeks to unite. Yet, what began as a promise of cohesion often became trapped in the rigidity of legal formality. In practice, the Court has maintained that its jurisdiction does not extend to human rights, even though it has often relied on the rule of law to vindicate human rights in some instances. The result has been a paradox: a union founded on “people-centered” values, yet a court hesitant to speak on the very dignity that integration presupposes.
Nevertheless, the EACJ has demonstrated its potential to uphold both human dignity and the rule of law within the region. Take, for example, the landmark victory of Martha Karua against Kenya’s Attorney General before the EACJ, which remains a powerful reminder that regional institutions and laws can indeed reign supreme over similar national ones, safeguarding citizens when domestic remedies fail.
Although the Treaty lacks a Bill of Rights, it embeds rights-oriented principles that bind partner states to democracy, rule of law, and respect for human rights. Yet, this foundation has met cautious interpretation, particularly on the Court’s human rights jurisdiction. Through this framing, a subtle moral undertone of justice and accountability is illuminated.
According to Justice Kiryabwire’s seminal paper, an apex court with unlimited jurisdiction is premature without a full political federation. He raises a pressing question on the possibility of the EAC integration succeeding without good governance. He opines that Article 27(2) of the Treaty explicitly positions human rights as “other,” signaling that enforcement falls outside the Court’s current jurisdiction and is deferred until deeper political integration occurs. It is through this careful ‘tiptoeing’ around rights that reflects an element of strategic restraint by partner states, allowing the Court to focus on only the interpretation of the Treaty while leaving expansive human rights enforcement for a later stage. Skeptics have argued that this kind of approach reveals the partner states’ reluctance to surrender sovereignty in politically sensitive areas. Yet this hesitation has not deterred litigants from seeking the enforcement of their rights before the EACJ. On the contrary, individuals continue to bring cases before the Court despite its cautious posture toward human rights violations. Wary of overstepping its jurisdiction, the Court continues to cloak its reasoning in the language of governance and rule of law rather than rights. While this caution preserves its institutional survival amid political sensitivities, it also risks reducing human dignity to mere rhetoric.
In the Katabazi case, Ugandan detainees had challenged their unlawful imprisonment against the Ugandan government. While the Court maintained a restrained approach, it confronted the deeper constitutional question before it. Though careful not to declare a human rights violation, the Court ruled that ignoring a High Court order breached the rule of law which member states have an obligation to uphold under the Treaty. It was a cautious yet significant acknowledgment that governance and rights are inseparable. The question, therefore, is whether EACJ’s cautious diplomacy strengthens its legitimacy by avoiding political storms, or hollows it out by making rights appear deferred until the elusive political federation is attained.
History has tried to offer guidance. The ECOWAS Court evolved into a human rights tribunal through the 2005 Protocol, just as the European Court of Justice began as a trade court before recognising fundamental rights in Stauder (1969). The Inter-American Human Rights System offers another example, where economic cooperation gradually demanded moral accountability. It is this positive historical background that reminds us that with political will and moral courage, even trade-focused tribunals can evolve into courts of rights. This trajectory of integration almost inevitably bends toward rights protection, and the EACJ cannot pretend it is exempt from this dynamic.
In July 2025, Kenya’s human rights activist, Boniface Mwangi and Uganda’s Agatha Atuhaire took this tension to the fore by petitioning the EACJ over alleged human rights violations by Tanzanian authorities. The petitioners cited torture, harassment, unlawful arrests, and intimidation aimed at silencing dissent. Such acts strike at the heart of the right to dignity and freedoms of expression, assembly, and association; rights that sustain democracy itself. Presently, the case involving the enforced disappearance of two Kenyan human rights defenders in Uganda remains under the spotlight as another glaring example of human rights violations. It goes without saying that if the EACJ cannot hear the cries of her people, then what remains of the EAC promise of unity?
These tensions across the region expose a deeper institutional fragility within the Community itself: one where political interests often outweigh the moral and legal imperatives of justice. It is within this discourse, therefore, that the EAC risks becoming irrelevant: for the pursuit of ‘development’ and ‘integration’ is meaningless if people cannot freely enjoy their rights. An ECDPM report builds on this tension, noting that politically motivated decisions by the Summit and reliance on member states for enforcement restrict the Court’s capacity to act autonomously.
By dint of these constraints, human rights remain largely unenforced, hovering, toothless, between the pages of the EAC Treaty, reflecting what Bentham hauntingly dismissed as “nonsense upon stilts.” It is within this dynamic that it becomes imperative for a people’s court to dare to speak when the dignity and sovereignty of its people are at stake. If citizens cannot look to the regional court when national institutions falter, then the “people-centered” promise of the Treaty stands betrayed. The EACJ now stands at an imaginary crossroads, entangled in a web of its own making. Yet its choice remains simple: to evolve into a true guardian of East Africa’s human rights. For in the silence of justice, integration itself risks devolving into a mere theatrical performance.
About the Author:
Carolyn W. Gatonye is an independent researcher and law student at Kabarak University, Kenya. She is passionate about constitutionalism, regional governance, and the advancement of human rights in the Global South.
