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Migration Jurisprudence from the South › Zambia

RADDHO v. Zambia

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

Citation: Communication 71/92
Type of case: Constitutional and human rights
Outcome: Decided for the migrant side

Question

Was Zambia’s expulsion of 517 West Africans lawful?

What the court decided

No. The mass expulsion, without a chance to challenge it in court, breached the African Charter.

In plain language

Zambia rounded up 517 people from West Africa, held them in a camp and flew them out without letting them go to court. The African Commission said this broke the African Charter.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Zambia menangkap 517 orang dari Afrika Barat, menahan mereka di kamp, dan menerbangkan mereka keluar tanpa kesempatan ke pengadilan. Komisi Afrika menyatakan ini melanggar Piagam Afrika.

Pertanyaan: Apakah pengusiran 517 warga Afrika Barat oleh Zambia sah?

What happened afterwards

  • 1992: Expulsions carried out.
  • 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-raddho-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.