This book argues that strengthening policing, and the rule of law is pivotal to promoting human rights, equity, access to justice and accountability in sub-Saharan Africa. Through a multidisciplinary approach, this book considers the principles of accountability, just laws, open government, and accessible and impartial dispute resolution, in relation to key institutions that deliver and promote the rule of law in selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Chapters examine a range of topics including police abuse of power and the use of force, police-citizen relations, judicial corruption, human rights abuse, brutality in the hands of armed forces, and combating arms proliferation. Drawing upon key institutions that deliver and promote the rule of law in sub-Saharan African countries including, Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Rwanda, and South Africa, the contributors argue that strengthening policing, security and the rule of law is pivotal to promoting human rights, equity, access to justice and accountability. As scholars from this geographical region, the contributing authors present current realities and first-hand accounts of the challenges in this context. This book will be of interest to scholars of African studies, criminology and criminal justice, police studies, international law practice, transitional justice, international development, and political science.

In Police Administration in Africa, Ejakait S.E. Opolot lays the foundation for future developments and trends in police administration in the former British colonies in Africa. Opolot emphasizes the dynamism between theory and practice. As such, Police Administration in Africa establishes a model to be replicated in other parts of the Third World.

The key argument of this book is that state policing plays a vital role in the realm of security sector governance, but that African police have several failings that are direct outcomes of their historical development: they are often violent, brutal, corrupt and politicised. As institutions, Africa's national police forces still tend to resemble those established by colonial powers in their structure and conduct, and are typically mistrusted by the very people for whom they are meant to ensure security and safety.

Policing is crucial to how Africans experience the freedoms of democracy and determines to a large degree the levels of economic investment they will enjoy. Yet it is a neglected area of study. Based on field research, this book reveals the surprising variety of people involved in policing besides the state police. Indeed many Africans are faced with a wide choice of public and private, legal and illegal, effective and ineffective policing. Policing in Africa is very much more than what the police do. It concerns the activities of business interests, residential communities, cultural groups, criminal organizations, local political figures and governments. How people negotiate this Smulti-choice of policing options, and the implications of this for government and donor security policy, is the subject of this book. It covers policing in all its forms in Sub-Saharan Africa, including two case studies of Uganda and Sierra Leone.

The UN plays a vital but underappreciated role in restoring the rule of law in countries recovering from civil war.

Over much of Africa, crime and insurgency are a serious problem and one in which the distinction between the two is being eroded. Left without state protection people have sought to preserve their lives and property through vigilante groups and militias that pay scant attention to the law or human rights. Likewise, the state security forces, under pressure to cut crime and rebel activity, readily discard lawful procedures. Torture provides them with vital information, whilst extra-judicial executions save the need to go through the prolonged criminal justice system. After a general overview of the role of the rule of law in a democratic society, Bruce Baker provides five case studies that capture the current complex realities and their impact on the new democracies. The citizen responses considered are vigilantes in East African pastoral economies, The Bakassi Boys an anti-crime group in Nigeria and private policing initiatives in South Africa. The state responses are those of the Ugandan Defence Forces towards the Lords Resistance Army, the Senegalese army towards the Casamance secessionists and the Mozambique Police response towards criminals.

This book explores the resilience of constitutional government in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, connecting and comparing perspectives from ten countries in sub-Saharan Africa to global trends. In emergency situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, a state has the right and duty under both international law and domestic constitutional law to take appropriate steps to protect the health and security of its population. Emergency regimes may allow for the suspension or limitation of normal constitutional government and even human rights. Those measures are not a license for authoritarian rule, but they must conform to legal standards of necessity, reasonableness, and proportionality that limit state action in ways appropriate to the maintenance of the rule of law in the context of a public health emergency. Bringing together established and emerging African scholars from ten countries, this book looks at the impact government emergency responses to the pandemic have on the functions of the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary, as well as the protection of human rights. It also considers whether and to what extent government emergency responses were consistent with international human rights law, in particular with the standards of legality, necessity, proportionality, and non-discrimination in the Siracusa Principles.

Get an inside look at the structure and function of the Natal Police Force with this official guide to its revised rules and regulations. This detailed document provides valuable insight into the day-to-day operations of law enforcement in colonial South Africa. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

"My intention [is] to provide a frank criticism of the British colonial legacies to countries which I have come to love and admire and a sincere unsycophantic tribute to those who are now struggling with the problems flowing from these legacies." In this book, an expanded version of The Oliver Wendell Holmes Lectures he delivered at Harvard University in 1966, Mr. Gower first looks at some of the legacies of colonialism inherited by those nations of Tropical Africa which recently gained independence from Britain: Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, The Gambia, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. These various legacies include arbitrary national boundaries imposed long before independence; British-style education, government, civil service, military forces, and police; respect for the rule of law (and a residual contempt for it as a result of colonial associations); underdeveloped and unbalanced economies; hostility toward the West, including American "dollar-imperialism," and a hypersensitivity to criticism from that quarter. Mr. Gower continues with an assessment of what has happened to these legacies since independence and what seems likely to happen to them in the next few decades. His central concern is the challenge thus implied for the indigenous legal professions, but his study has far wider implications. In conclusion Mr. Gower describes how the legal professions were organized at the time of independence in the various countries and what progress has been made in producing the kinds of lawyers needed to solve the urgent problems these countries face. He suggests what the United States can and should-and occasionally what it should not-do to help.