and ascertaining questions of fact and law, that could possibly have been provided, raised,
and/or invoked by the Respondent State. It is important to mention at the outset that the
Guidelines for the Consideration of Communications explicitly provide that the absence of a
party shall not necessarily hinder the consideration of a communication.
Admissibility
Complainants’ submission on admissibility
15.
The current communication is submitted pursuant to Article 44 of the African
Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child which allows the African Committee to
receive and consider communications from “any person, group or nongovernmental
organization…”.The Guidelines for the Consideration of Communications provides, under
Chapter II Article 1, that the admissibility of a communication submitted pursuant to Article
44 is subject to around seven conditions relating to form and content.
16. The Complainants submitted, in a submission dated 6th November 2009, that the
authors of the Communication have been identified and relevant details of the
Communication have been provided to the Committee, it is written and it is against a State
Party to the African Children’s Charter. The Complainants submitted that the
Communication is compatible with the provisions of the Constitutive Act of the African
Union as well as with the African Children’s Charter, that the Communication is not
exclusively based on information circulated by the media, and that the same issue has not
been considered according to another international procedure. In addition, the
Complainants submitted that the Communication is submitted within a reasonable period of
time and that the Communication is not written in an offensive language.
17.
A more detailed explanation is provided by the Complainants in relation to the
requirement to “…exhaust all appeal channels at the national level…”.In this regard, the
Complainants submitted that they have undertaken a number of efforts to exhaust local
remedies for a period of seven years in order to resolve the issue of lack of citizenship of the
Nubian community.
18.
The Complainants submit that in 2002 the Nubian community, through the Kenyan
Nubian Council of Elders, instructed the Centre for Minority Rights Development
(CEMIRIDE) to institute legal proceedings against the Kenyan Government. On 17th March
2003 an action was commenced in the High Court of Kenya by way of an urgent application
that led to a leave to file a class action suit on behalf of the Nubian community.
19.
However, the Complainants indicate that, even though CEMIRIDE filed the
substantial constitutional application the same day in the High Court in Nairobi, numerous
procedural obstacles have since been raised which have stalled the case. These obstacles
reportedly include how on 8 July 2003 a certain Justice of the High Court declined to
transmit the file to the Chief Justice on the ground that it was necessary to ascertain the
identity of the 100,000 applicants; how another Justice of the High Court subsequently
agreed that such a process to ascertain was unreasonable and fixed a date for a hearing of
the merits of the case for the 7th of June 2004; but later on how, on the 7th of June 2004,
again another Justice declined to hear the application and referred it back to the duty judge
for directions on grounds that there were contradictory orders in the file.
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