Institute for Migrant Rights
Railway line at Cianjur station, c. 1890 · KITLV, CC BY 4.0

Migration Jurisprudence from the South › Rwanda

OMCT and others v. Rwanda

African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights · Rwanda · 1996-10 · Regional court or body

Citation: Communications 27/89, 46/91, 49/91, 99/93
Type of case: Constitutional and human rights
Outcome: Decided for the migrant side

Question

Could Rwanda expel Burundian refugees as a group?

What the court decided

No. Expelling people because of their nationality, without individual decisions, breached the Charter.

In plain language

Rwanda expelled Burundian refugees as a group because of their nationality. The African Commission said each person must be considered individually.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Rwanda mengusir pengungsi Burundi secara berkelompok karena kewarganegaraannya. Komisi Afrika menyatakan setiap orang harus dipertimbangkan satu per satu.

Pertanyaan: Bisakah Rwanda mengusir pengungsi Burundi secara berkelompok?

What happened afterwards

  • 1996-10: Decision adopted.

Sources

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/achpr-omct-rwanda-1996/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

Keywords: case law; jurisprudence; judicial decisions; comparative constitutional law; courts and migration; judicial behavior; litigation outcomes; refugee law; non-refoulement; citizenship and nationality; empirical legal studies; empirical legal scholarship; quantitative legal research; statistical analysis in law; law and economics; law and economics of migration; comparative law; socio-legal studies; legal pluralism; migration law; labor migration; migrant workers’ rights; human rights law; access to justice; Global South; Asia; Africa; Middle East; Latin America; Indonesia; open data; replication data.