In March 1996, CESR and Social and Economic Rights Action Center (SERAC), a Nigeria-based human rights organization jointly submitted a legal communication to the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rightsregarding economic and social rights violations in Nigeria. Thepetition broke new ground at the Commission, which had yet to considerany of the economic and social guarantees contained in the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights.
The petition focused on violations of the rights to health, housing and food inNigeria's oil-producing region and was intended to: 1) draw attentionto the massive environmental and social problems underlying theexecution of Ken Saro Wiwa and other local activists; 2) broaden therange of human rights concerns considered by the Commission; and 3)provide a model communication for other human rights and social justiceadvocates in Africa.
Six years later the African Commission found the former military government of Nigeria guilty of economic, social and cultural rights violations against the Ogonipeople in connection with state violence and abuses around oildevelopment in the Niger Delta. The Commission also made recommendations for the current government to take remedial action for those violations.
