668 AFRICAN COURT LAW REPORT VOLUME 1 (2006-2016) Actions pour la Protection des Droits de l’Homme (APDH) v Côte d’Ivoire (2016) 1 AfCLR 668 Actions pour la Protection des Droits de l’Homme (APDH) v The Republic of Côte d’Ivoire Judgment, 18 November 2016. Done in English and French, the French text being authoritative. Judges: KIOKO, NIYUNGEKO, OUGUERGOUZ, RAMADHANI, TAMBALA, THOMPSON, GUISSÉ, BEN ACHOUR, BOSSA and MATUSSE Recused under Article 22: ORE The case dealt with the law regulating the composition, organisation and functioning of the Ivorian Electoral Commission. The Court held that the African Democracy Charter and ECOWAS Democracy Protocol were human rights instruments in terms of Article 3 of the Court Protocol. On the merits, the Court held that these instruments did not prescribe any precise characteristics of an independent and impartial electoral body. An electoral body would, however, be deemed independent if ‘it has administrative and financial autonomy; and offers sufficient guarantees of its members’ independence and impartiality’. In the case at hand the imbalance in representation in favour of the ruling coalition amounted to a violation of its obligation to establish an independent and impartial electoral management body. Jurisdiction (human rights instruments, 49, 57-61, African Democracy Charter and ECOWAS Democracy Protocol, 63-65, Admissibility (exhaustion of local remedies: availability, effectiveness, sufficiency, 93; administrative jurisdiction, 96-98; constitutional validity decided by Constitutional Council, 101, outcome of local remedies already known, 103) Political participation (independent and impartial electoral body, 116118; balanced composition of electoral body, 125-133, 150) Equal protection of the law (political candidates, 151) Separate opinion: OUGUERGOUZ Political participation independence, 14-16, 22) (distinguish between impartiality Remedies (Court should not go beyond Applicant’s prayers, 30-31) and

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