The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights: The Development of its Non-State Communication Procedures

The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights2 was adopted in June 1981 at the Eighteenth Conference of Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity. As envisaged in Article 63, the Charter entered into force three months after ratification by a simple majority of state parties of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), on 21 October 1986.3 A decade later, by October 1996, fifty African states had ratified it.4