Abstract

WILLIAMS, Nyanda Mkamwa. Mandatory vaccinations and human rights in Africa: The urgent need for an effective legal framework within the African Union. AHRY [online]. 2022, vol.6, pp.106-128. ISSN 2663-323X.  http://dx.doi.org/10.29053/2523-1367/2022/v6a5.

For several decades, vaccination has been the most widely used prevention mechanism for infectious diseases. Vaccines are medicines designed to prevent many risks, to enable the human being to enjoy a better state of health. In this logic of promoting individual and especially collective health, vaccines are imposed on infants, or on people of all ages. In almost all the countries of the African Union, vaccines are compulsory. However, in view of the protection of the right to life and the right to physical integrity enshrined in Article 4 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the human body is inviolable. Every person, every patient, should have the right to give informed consent, personally or through their representative, to a medicine or therapy, whether preventive or curative. This situation begs the question whether these compulsory vaccinations are consistent with the African Union's human rights protection system. With the persistence of COVID-19, which has become a global pandemic, and the many controversial debates about the proposed vaccines against this disease, the issue of mandatory vaccinations deserves to be deeply considered by the African Union, for the optimal protection of human rights in Africa. While compulsory vaccinations are legitimate but implicit infringements of the African Union's human rights protection system, there is an urgent need for a better legal framework for this practice, for a more effective protection of human rights in Africa. This study relied on doctrinal legal approach based on which it meticulously analysed the legal norms of the African Union, and on a case-by-case analytical approach which allowed it to evaluate the implementation of these norms.

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