Just a few years after Latin American leaders began to establish regional authority over human rights, African leaders started to face similar economic pressure in their relations with European governments, most significantly in the context of the Lomé Convention, an aid and preferential trade agreement with the European Economic Community. In response, African leaders created their own regional human rights system from scratch, setting up a human rights charter and a commission to enforce the charter within the Organization of African Unity. This chapter traces the drafting history of the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights, showing that the initiative to create a regional human rights system was led by prominent human rights advocates who wanted an African-owned and -led system. Many African leaders were concerned with the level of authority given to the proposed human rights commission and the fact that it compromised on non-interference. They ultimately accepted it, in spite of these concerns, because of the shadow cast by new Western enforcement.