Introduction
It is often remarked that international law has little to say, or not enough to say, about democracy. As a system of law between states, many of which are far from democratic, the law of nations is famously laconic concerning the state’s internal political form—at most, norms like self-determination have sometimes been taken to mean that democratic backsliding may be prohibited, even if international law cannot be said to require democratic forms of government outright. What is less well known, however, is that international democratic norms have been more strongly enshrined at the regional level. Among the fifty-five states of the African Continent, international legal commitments to internal democratic governance have been particularly vibrant, pace general international legal principles like sovereign equality and non-intervention in domestic affairs. This symposium considers the development of Africa’s international law of democracy, in order to foreground its strengths, its weaknesses, and its promise as a source of inspiration at a time when democracies are on the precipice across the globe.
It is important to stress at the outset that the story of Africa’s international law of democracy has so far been one of mixed success. In terms of norms and multilateral institutions, Africa has been a leader, neither a norm-taker, nor necessarily a norm-giver, but rather a robust and independent creator of its own international legal commitments to internal democratic governance. On the other hand, the continent’s history of democracy has been more checkered in practice, with significant cases of backsliding, norm-flouting, and selectivity in enforcement over the years.
On the level of norms, African states have gone considerably farther than other regional groupings in instituting a robust international law of democracy beyond the state. A substantial body of African regional treaties and instruments now require their states parties to institute or maintain democracy within their territories. Several of these instruments explicitly prohibit unconstitutional changes of government. Some instruments also establish rules of democratic governance at the continental level, including principally the Constitutive Act of the African Union,Footnote 1 the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (African Charter),Footnote 2 the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG),Footnote 3 and the so-called Malabo Protocol.Footnote 4 Some subregional groups of states have gone even further toward integrating international democratic norms. In particular, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has played a leading role on this front, with obligations enshrined in the ECOWAS Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance.Footnote 5
Alongside this normative architecture, some of Africa’s international courts and quasi-judicial bodies have developed a robust jurisprudence on democratization and democratic governance, at times reaching deeply into the constitutional orders of African states. For instance, as far back as 1994, instantiating a norm against unconstitutional changes of government, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights passed a resolution declaring military coups illegal under the African Charter.Footnote 6 More recently, the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights, in Houngue Eric Noudehouenou v. Benin, declared illegal a series of constitutional amendments in the Republic of Benin, for failing to satisfy the obligation under the ACDEG for constitutional changes to be based on true “national consensus”—on the basis that the amendments were enacted by a parliament adjudged to have been unfairly dominated by the currently ruling party.Footnote 7 The African Court directly ordered Benin to repeal changes to its own constitution, underscoring the evolving reach of African institutions in implementing the Continental law of democracy.Footnote 8
What is more, although not always consistently,Footnote 9 key African regional political institutions have exerted their authority in defense of democracy when responding to coups d’état on the continent, often resorting to sanctions and sometimes even the threat of force. The African Union has imposed economic sanctions on numerous occasions against states where unconstitutional changes of government have occurred. For instance, the African Union has imposed sanctions on Togo (2005), Comoros (2007), Guinea (2009), Madagascar (2009), Egypt (2012), the Central African Republic (2013), and Burkina Faso (2015).Footnote 10 Among others, it has also imposed one type of sanction or the other for similar reasons on Mali (2021),Footnote 11 Burkina Faso (2022), Niger (2023), and Sudan (2019).Footnote 12 ECOWAS’s practice has been quite similar in this connection, albeit generally more robust. For instance, ECOWAS credibly threatened to use force to depose then President Yahya Jammeh of the Gambia in 2017, after he lost an election but refused to leave office.Footnote 13 Indeed, ECOWAS launched an operation to achieve this objective, leading to his vacating office and going into exile before kinetic force was used.Footnote 14 Recent examples include ECOWAS’s imposition of economic sanctions (and threat to use force in one case) in response to the coups in Burkina Faso in 2021 and 2022, Guinea in 2022, Mali in 2020, and Niger in 2023.Footnote 15
On the other hand, despite its extensive and substantial body of international legal rules and institutions dedicated to the promotion and preservation of democracy across the continent, implementation has proved a challenge. International legal norms and institutions have not been able to constrain all cases of democratic backsliding and coups d’état in Africa—though expectations of what international law alone can and cannot do in the face of high politics need always to be tempered.Footnote 16 Worse, there has been significant selectivity and (unjustifiable) inconsistency in the application of these democratic norms to similar facts and situations.Footnote 17 While the African Union has tended to impose sanctions on countries and governments over unconstitutional changes of government, this tendency has been much more attenuated in the case of the more economically, militarily, and politically powerful countries on the continent. For instance, the African Union lifted its sanctions against Egypt, one of its most powerful states, after current President El-Sisi, the leader of the coup that overthrew then President Morsi, participated in and won an election one year later.Footnote 18 This clearly violated the African Union’s prohibition on perpetrators of unconstitutional changes of government from participating in elections held to restore democratic order.Footnote 19 At the time, key observers remarked on the connection between Egyptian power and aggressive lobbying, and the decision to violate this norm against unconstitutional changes of government. A counterfactual is that over a decade later, in 2025, the African Union acted similarly in relation to Gabon, a much less powerful African country.Footnote 20 Yet, it could be credibly argued that Gabon merely benefited from the precedent set by earlier breaches of the norm in favor of Egypt.
More recently, the interaction between ECOWAS’s democratic norms and the realities of high politics in West Africa has helped trigger the strong resistance of certain of its (now former) member states to subregional supervision of their governance arrangements. For example, the imposition of very robust sanctions by ECOWAS on Niger, following earlier measures against Burkina Faso and Mali, in response to coups d’état in those countries between 2020 and 2025, was met with largely unprecedented defiance and resistance in each of those countries.Footnote 21 Indeed, the combination of ECOWAS’s imposition of quite harsh and blunt measures, such as cutting off Nigerian-supplied electricity to Niger and threatening to use force, ostensibly to restore the now ousted democratically elected government to power, was a key factor in influencing all three states to withdraw from membership in ECOWAS altogether.Footnote 22 These three states have now formed a new Association of Sahel States. Evidently, the internationalization and institutionalization of the law of democracy in a system of sovereign states confronts significant problems of exit and voice.Footnote 23
Despite the importance of these (both positive and negative) developments in the praxis of the African regional international law of democracy—and in spite of their apparent significance for international legal theory and practice more generally—these developments have been largely understudied (especially outside the African continent). We do not yet know nearly enough about the conceptions, breadth, depth, nuances, valency, challenges, and limitations of the law and institutions of democracy on the African continent. This symposium contributes to the effort to close this significant gap in the literature. To this end, the five essays in this symposium engage a range of questions and issues concerning the normativity and implementation of Africa’s international law of democracy.
Normativity
Several of the contributions focus on the conceptions of democracy and democratization that have framed and shaped attempts to advance democratic ideals and values on the continent through African regional international law-making and implementation.
In Musings on “Internationality,” Christiana Sagay engages the very conception of democracy as it has been articulated and applied over the years on the African continent.Footnote 24 She focuses on the rootedness of the current understandings of democracy in the Pan-Africanist and autochthonous visions of the continent’s first generation of post-independence political philosophers, such as Nnamdi Azikiwe, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, and Kenneth Kaunda. Sagay argues that Africa’s regional political institutions have articulated and sought to implement a vision of democracy in international law that is broadly rooted in the pan-Africanist visions and writings of Africa’s first generation of leaders. Their vision includes several elements such as participatory governance beyond the minimalist paradigm of democracy; the protection of a broader range of human rights; a pride of place to socio-economic justice; accountability mechanisms; transparency; and cultural pluralism. In this way, Sagay argues that pan-African institutions have striven to develop and implement an African law of democracy, rather than a law on democracy in Africa.
In All Politics Is Not Local, Chidi Anselm Odinkalu illustrates how Africa’s institutional architecture has shifted from a norm of non-interference to a framework of interventionist norms in defense of democracy.Footnote 25 Odinkalu outlines three bundles of norms at the core of Africa’s legal framework for protecting democracy: norms regarding access to political power; norms against executive tenure indeterminacy; and norms against removal from office of officials who have acquired power legitimately, except through lawful means.
Implementation
Norms are, of course, not self-enforcing. This symposium is equally concerned with their implementation by regional institutions, and the question of compliance at the national level. The three essays by Obiora Okafor and Adaora Nwajiaku, Joshua J. Niyo, and Adaobi Egboka each tackle this implementation issue to various extents.
Okafor and Nwajiaku consider one of the most robust and innovative aspects of the African law of democracy: the prohibition on unconstitutional changes of government (such as military coups, autogolpe, and anti-democratic change through formally legal means).Footnote 26 In Between Robust Norms and Centrifugal Realities, Okafor and Nwajiaku show that African regional international law defines unconstitutional change broadly and prohibits such change explicitly as violations of norms of democracy and self-determination. They further show that the African regional systems set up robust institutions for responding to unconstitutional changes of government, through sanctions on responsible individuals and governments, ostracism at the international level, and even collective military intervention. Yet, Okafor and Nwajiaku call attention to the gulf between these robust norms and the much more checkered facts on the ground when it comes to implementation. They highlight the numerous coups against democratic governments in West Africa over the last five years (Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Niger), where enforcement efforts have largely failed—sometimes backfiring spectacularly—and contrast these with unconstitutional changes in the strongest states of the region like Egypt, Nigeria, and Côte d’Ivoire, where enforcement was scarcely attempted. Yet despite the qualified nature of success on the ground, the authors conclude that Africa’s achievements on the level of norms should be celebrated as a remarkable and resilient point of aspiration.
Niyo’s essay, More Stick and Less Carrot: ECOWAS, the Use of Force to Defend Democracy, and the Contest Between Regional and International Normative Regimes, considers ECOWAS’s resort to the threat or use of force to enforce the international law of democracy.Footnote 27 Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits the threat or use of force by states against each other, except when authorized by the UN Security Council under Chapter VII of that treaty or in self-defense against an imminent attack. Yet, Niyo explains that the ECOWAS has tended to threaten or use force against its member states in response to military coups d’état, to pressure them to restore constitutional rule and deter unconstitutional changes of government. Niyo considers the extent to which this tendency is consistent with general international law, finding the threat or use of force to enforce African democratic norms to be evidently controversial, though not entirely implausible.
In Democracy from Below, Egboka explores the role of national government institutions in shaping Africa’s international law of democracy.Footnote 28 Egboka shows how it is up to national governments and institutions to safeguard the core principles of democratic elections in Africa. Drawing on several examples—including the recent presidential elections in Senegal, Malawi, and Kenya—the essay argues that national courts have emerged as active co-creators of democratic legitimacy and institutional resilience to enhance public trust, even under intense political pressure from anti-democratic elements seeking to undermine or manipulate democratic processes. Egboka argues that the practice of national courts has important effects at the continental level as well, toward developing a “democratic front” across Africa. Yet the essay cautions against over-judicialization and politicization of courts. It concludes that supporting national courts and their actors in brave early intervention in electoral disputes can foster democratic resilience and contribute to realizing the continental aspiration of the African law of democracy.
Conclusion
This symposium turns a spotlight on the normative content and influence of Africa’s international law of democracy. It maps the relatively robust continental normative framework in this area and analyzes both the modest efforts to implement it (including through the threat or use of force), and the challenges that continue to inhibit its optimal effectiveness. It also engages and highlights the issues of legitimacy and overreach that have arisen as this much understudied, yet important regional regime navigates (sometimes perilously) between optimal implementation and overly constrained responses to democratic backsliding in breach of international legal norms.
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