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and International Courts

African Women

Click below to read our background paper:

African Women Judges on International Courts: Symbolic or Substantive Gains?

Bensaoula Chafika

African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACtHPR)

ALGERIA

Justice Bensaoula Chafika is an Algerian jurist who was elected judge of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights for a six-year term in January 2017. Justice Chafika received a Doctorate in Public Law and is a lecturer at the National School of Magistracy in Algeria. At one point in her career, she also served as Director of the Department of Legal Studies and Documentation at the Ministry of Justice. Other positions she has taken up include Inspector of Administrative and Judicial Courts and member of the Board of Directors of the Institut de Droit et Justice.

She has been a judge of the Criminal Affairs Chambers and Court of Appeal in Algeria and was nominated for the International Narcotics Control Board by the Algerian government in 2016. As a judge in the Criminal Affairs Chambers, she handled cases related to delinquents. Justice Chafika was elected to the African Court in 2017, alongside Justice Tujilane Chizumila. The two women were sworn in at the same time, historically lifting the number of women in the court up to five. This enabled the African Court to reach the gender parity requirement stated in Article 12(2) and Article 14(3) of the Protocol that established it. Justice Chafika was elected to the Court during the 28th Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union and was appointed during the 44th Ordinary Session of the Court in March 2017.

She has written several publications on administrative matters, including ‘The issue of mediation in Algerian Civil and Administrative Procedure Code’, ‘Conciliation in Administrative Matters’, and ‘Enforcement of administrative judgments by the administration’. She speaks French, Arabic, and English.

Sophia A. B. Akuffo

African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACtHPR)

GHANA

Sophia Akuffo is the former Chief Justice of Ghana. She received her Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Ghana and qualified as a barrister at the Ghana School of Law. She was trained as a lawyer under Nana Akufo-Addo and received a Master’s Degree in Law from Harvard University. Organizations that she worked at after law school included Akufo-Addo, Prempeh & Co., Mobil Oil, and Ghana Airways, where she served as Legal Director. She was nominated to the Supreme Court of Ghana in 1995, where she used her rulings to protect the rights of Ghanaian women. In the case of Mensah v. Mensah (2012), it was decided that women had the right to acquire half of all properties gained during the marriage from the divorce. In 2006, she was elected as one of the first judges of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, alongside Justice Kelello Justina Mafoso-Guni.

In 2008, she was appointed as Vice-President of the Court, was re-elected in 2010, and was appointed as the Court’s first female President in 2012. As part of her mandate, Akuffo sought to spread awareness of the Court and what it did across Africa, and she did this through educational outreaches. Akuffo was nominated as Chief Justice in May 2017, and sworn in that same year by President Akufo-Addo, making her Ghana’s 13th Chief Justice and the second successive woman to serve as Chief Justice in the country.
Akuffo retired in 2019 but was appointed to Ghana’s COVID-19 Fund in February 2020. Justice Akuffo has served on the governing Committee of the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute, and the Alternative Dispute Resolution Task-Force. She has also participated in several judicial system reforms, including the implementation of a fast- track court system and revamping of the Ghana Law School.

Kelello Justina Mafoso-Guni

African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACtHPR)

LESOTHO

Kelello Mafoso-Guni is a former judge of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. She was also the first female lawyer in Lesotho and the first woman to serve in the High Court of Lesotho. Mafoso-Guni studied law at the University of Lesotho and the University of Edinburgh and was appointed Crown Counsel in Lesotho from 1970 to 1974. She then moved to the United Kingdom to work in the civil service for twelve years.

Upon returning to Africa, she became a magistrate in Zimbabwe in 1980, becoming the first woman in the country to serve on that bench. She served as Senior Magistrate but quickly moved on to become Provincial Magistrate of Mashonaland whilst also presiding over the juvenile court. She served as a magistrate in Zimbabwe for twelve years. In 1995, she returned to Lesotho and became the first woman judge appointed to the High Court, blazing a path for other female judges in the country.

Mafoso-Guni handled many cases, including some relating to gender discrimination. An example of one of these cases was Mahasele v. Kali (2011), in which Mafoso-Guni ruled against a soldier avoiding taking a paternity test. She reasoned that the child deserved to know who their father was. Up until her African Court nomination, Mafoso-Guni had proven herself to be an ideal candidate with over 20 years of judicial experience.

In 2006, she was elected for a four-year term as one of the first judges of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, alongside Sophia Akuffo. Despite only getting to hear one case during her term at the African Court, Mafoso-Guni was instrumental in laying down some of the foundations of the Court, including its codes of procedure and its registrar. She continued to work as a judge of Lesotho’s High Court whilst at the Court.

Tujilane Rose Chizumila

African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACtHPR)

MALAWI

Justice Tujilane Chizumila is a Malawian lawyer and jurist who was appointed as a judge of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in 2017 during the 28th Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union. She has over 30 years of experience working in a legal, judicial, governing and democratic, and diplomatic capacity, on international programs, as well as in human rights and rule of law. She has served in Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania, in the Tanzania Legal Cooperation. Justice Chizumila has a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Dar es Salaam and a Master’s degree in International Law. Chizumila worked for Save the Children for around a year before reporting to the Minister of Justice as a State Advocate. She was the first woman to establish a law firm in Malawi, and in 2000, she was the first female African Ambassador to be appointed High Commissioner to Zimbabwe.

In 2003, she was appointed judge of the High Court of Malawi. Justice Chizumila has served as Secretary of the Law Society of Malawi and was appointed Malawi’s first female Ombudsman by the Public Appointments Committee of the National Assembly. She served in this capacity from 2010 to 2015. Sticking to her reputation for ‘firsts’, she was also one of the first officers appointed by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to address issues of displacement and child protection in Malawi. She was elected to the African Court in January 2017 and took up the seat in March of the same year.

Justice Chizumila is also a scholar who released the publication “A widow’s perspective- A personal experience”, which helped enact a law that made property grabbing illegal. Other publications include: “Women’s leadership roles and food security for refugees in Nsanje” and “Food distribution and sexual harassment in Ntcheu”.


Stella Isibhakhomen Anukam

African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACtHPR)

NIGERIA

Justice Stella Anukam is a Nigerian judge of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights who was elected to serve in that capacity for a six-year term in July 2018. She obtained her Law degree from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria in 1984, and her B.L from the Nigerian Law School, Lagos. She was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1985 and began her Civil Service career in 1987. Justice Anukam is a Director of Special Programs at the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, and former Director of the International and Comparative Law department of the Federal Ministry of Justice. She also previously served as Director of the Freedom of Information Unit in the Federal Ministry of Justice. At the time of being appointed to the African Court, Justice Anukam also served as the National Coordinator on Human Rights Issues in Nigeria.

Prior to her election to the African Court, Justice Anukam had vast experience in human rights issues and leading the Nigerian delegation to numerous meetings of the Ordinary Sessions of the African Union Commission on Human and People’s Rights. Justice Anukam’s election to the African Court was historical because her inclusion on the bench, amongst others, brought the gender composition of the Bench up to six women and five men. On top of being an experienced jurist, she is also a Chartered Secretary, a practiced Administrator, and a Chartered Arbitrator.

Anukam is a member of several professional legal bodies, including the International Bar Association (IBA), the African Bar Association, the International Federation of Female Lawyers, and the Institute of Chartered Secretaries & Administrators (ICSA) London, and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in Nigeria. She is a recipient of the Integrity Driven Women in Public Service, the Outstanding Legal Adviser in the Federation, and The Corporate Amazon Women of Excellence Award.

Imani Daud Aboud

African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACtHPR)

TANZANIA

Justice Imani Daud Aboud is a Tanzanian judge of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights who was elected to serve in that capacity in July 2018. Justice Aboud received her Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Dar es Salaam and her Master of Law degree from the International Maritime Organization.

She is a judge of the Tanzanian High Court and has held several important positions, such as that of the Assistant Director in the President’s Office (Public Service Management), and State Attorney at the Attorney General’s Chambers. She was President of the Tanzania Women Judges Association (TAWJA) from 2015 to 2017 but now serves as a trainer in programs such as ‘Sextortion’. Justice Aboud was one of the founders of the Commission for Human Rights and Good Governance (CHRAGG) in Tanzania and was a member of the Tanzanian task force behind the Local Government reform and Labour Law Reforms.
She has also represented her government in many different human rights conferences and has written reports on Human Rights to the UN and other international monitoring bodies such as the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Justice Aboud has also served as Vice-Chairperson to the Independent Review Electoral Commission in Kenya, a commission created to review the election process in the country.

She represented Africa on the International Association of Women Judges’ (IAWJ) Board of Directors and is a member of the Monitoring Team in the United Nations Mechanism for the International Criminal Tribunal (MICT), where she handled Rwandan genocide cases. She was a Monitor in two court proceedings related to the Jean Ukwinkindi case in Rwanda in April 2015. She is also on the Advisory Board for the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) Citizen for Justice branch based in Malawi.

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