AFRICA IN INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS TEXTBOOKS CHRISTOF HEYNS ∗ AND MAGNUS KILLANDER † It is encouraging to see that the African regional human rights system is receiving increased consideration in textbooks about international human rights and, as such, that the African experience is becoming more integrated into the global understanding of what the concept of human rights entails. This note examines the way in which this subject is treated by a selection of textbooks aimed at students of international human rights that are currently being widely used. We highlight instances of discrepancies between the system’s presentation and its actual operation. The African regional human rights system is the youngest of the three regional human rights systems. The main African human rights instrument is the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Charter) 1 , ratified by all 53 member states of the African Union (AU). 2 The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Commission) was established in 1987 after ∗ Professor of Human Rights Law and Director, Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, South Africa. † Researcher, Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, South Africa. 1 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 26 June 1981, OAU Doc. CAB/LEG/67/3 rev. 5 (entered into force 21 October 1986), reprinted in 21 ILM 59 (1982) and in C. Heyns (ed) Human Rights Law in Africa (2004) 134. 2 Constitutive Act of the African Union, 11 July 2000, OAU Doc. CAB/LEG/23.15 (entered into force 26 May 2001), reprinted in Heyns, supra note 1, 181. The AU was launched in July 2002, replacing the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) as the regional cooperation organisation encompassing all African countries except Morocco. The AU Constitutive Act sets out the protection of human rights as one of the purposes of the AU.