This book is published as the African Union (AU) recently celebrated its Year of Human Rights, based on the fact that the year 2016 marked 30 years since the entry into force of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Charter), on 21 October 1986. The African Charter is the normative backbone of the African human rights system. It is therefore an opportune moment to reflect on the extent to which the Charter – and the African regional human rights system more generally – has achieved its aim of ensuring the enjoyment of the fundamental rights and freedoms of Africa's people. Although the scholarly literature about the African human rights system has grown over these three decades, it remains relatively sparse. By exploring the topic of extraterritorial application of rights, this book is a remarkable landmark, in that it opens a perspective on the African regional system that has received limited scholarly attention over these 30 years. It supplements the only comprehensive work focused on extraterritoriality in Africa, by one of the co-editors (Bulto, The Extraterritorial Application of the Human Right to Water in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2014)). In the process, it also makes a significant contribution to emerging global scholarship on a topic of growing importance.

The extraterritorial application of human rights in Africa is a topic ripe for and worthy of further examination. The negative forces of globalisation have had a profound effect on Africa. Characterised by small economies and weak state infrastructure, a number of African states are extremely exposed to the might and influence of foreign and multinational companies operating on their soil. This position of relative weakness has seen the perpetuation of abhorrent practices such as cheap, exploitative labour practices and’ land grabbing’. The topic is also relevant in the epoch of wars on terror, internationalised and de-territorialised terrorism and the responses thereto. These responses have also affected Africa, exemplified in drone strikes and extraordinary renditions.

The international community has only slowly awakened to these emergent realities.