An examination preparation note for first-year LLM students covering three modules.
FOURAH BAY COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF SIERRA LEONE
FACULTY OF LAW
DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN RIGHTS, CONSTITUTIONALISM AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE
MASTER OF LAWS (LLM), YEAR ONE
EXAMINATION PREPARATION NOTE
Covering three modules:
Legal Research | Human Rights in the Regional and National Context | Business and Human Rights Law A consolidated teaching and revision note answering the examination guideline questions in each module, prepared at postgraduate doctrinal depth with verified authorities.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
General Introduction and How to Use This Note3
MODULE ONE: LEGAL RESEARCH4
Q1 Thesis Research Proposal on a Topic of Choice4 Q2 Ethical Considerations in the Use of AI Tools in Legal Research6 Q3 Parameters of a Concept Note and Its Significance8 Q4 Advisory Opinion: Benefits of the First Year of the LLM and Reform9 MODULE TWO: HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE REGIONAL AND NATIONAL CONTEXT12 Q1 Key Institutional Frameworks Protecting Human Rights in Sierra Leone12 Q2 Three Superior Court Human Rights Cases and Their Significance14 Q3 Key Challenges to the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights18 MODULE THREE: BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS LAW20 Q1 Institutional Frameworks for Business and Human Rights Oversight20 Q2 Three Business and Human Rights Cases and Their Significance22 Q3 The Resource Curse: Factors and the Route of Escape25 Q4 Can National Business and Human Rights Legislation Make a Difference?27 General Introduction and How to Use This Note This note consolidates examination preparation across three LLM modules, taken together because they share a single analytical spine: the gap between the formal recognition of rights and their effective enforcement. Each module examination instructs the candidate to answer three questions. For safety every guideline question has been answered in full, so that whichever three are set, a prepared and well authorities answer is already in hand. The candidate should not reproduce an answer verbatim but should internalise its structure, its authorities and its argumentative position, then write in the candidate’s own hand under examination conditions.
A recurring thesis runs through the human rights and business and human rights answers, and it is worth stating at the outset because an examiner rewards a candidate who argues from a consistent intellectual position rather than reciting disconnected facts. The thesis is this: voluntary and aspirational frameworks consistently under protect; binding frameworks coupled with credible enforcement machinery are what convert paper rights into lived rights. That single idea explains why Sierra Leone can have an admirable Bill of Rights in Chapter III of the 1991 Constitution and yet a weak rights culture, why the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights have not disciplined extractive companies, and why national legislation with teeth is preferable to corporate self regulation.
Three conventions are used throughout. First, every legal authority is cited so that it can be traced; Sierra Leonean cases and statutes take priority, with English, Commonwealth, African regional and international authorities used to illuminate rather than displace the domestic position. Second, each answer closes with a short Exam approach pointer and a Golden rule memory line, which are revision aids and not part of the essay to be copied out. Third, the house style of continuous, justified prose is retained; sub points are carried as bold lead ins within paragraphs rather than as bullet lists, because an LLM script is assessed as an argument, not as a list.
MODULE ONE: LEGAL RESEARCH
Examination rubric: answer any three of the four questions below. All four are answered here.
Question 1: Draft a Thesis Research Proposal on a Topic of Your Choice
A research proposal is a disciplined argument that a problem is worth studying, that it has not already been settled, and that the writer has a credible plan to study it. What follows is a model proposal, drafted to the standard the Faculty expects, on a topic that sits squarely within the Department of Human Rights, Constitutionalism and Criminal Justice and lends itself to original Sierra Leonean fieldwork.
Proposed title
“Closing the Enforcement Gap: Towards a Binding National Framework on Business and Human Rights in Sierra Leone’s Extractive Sector.”
Background and statement of the problem
Sierra Leone is richly endowed with diamonds, iron ore, rutile, bauxite and gold, yet the communities nearest to extraction remain among the poorest in the country, and extraction has repeatedly been accompanied by forced displacement, environmental harm and violent confrontation between residents and security forces. The governing regimes for corporate conduct are largely voluntary or soft: the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, and sectoral codes. The problem this study addresses is the enforcement gap: the distance between the human rights obligations that Sierra Leone has assumed in principle and the absence of a binding, justiciable national instrument that compels business enterprises to respect those rights and gives affected communities an effective remedy.
Research questions
(a) The descriptive question. What is the existing legal and institutional framework governing business and human rights in Sierra Leone, spread as it is across the Constitution, the Mines and Minerals Development Act 2022, the Customary Land Rights Act 2022, the Environment Protection Agency Act and the mandate of the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone? (b) The analytical question. Where and why does that framework fail to prevent or remedy corporate related human rights harm? (c) The normative question. Would a dedicated, binding National Action Law on Business and Human Rights, modelled on the “smart mix” of mandatory human rights due diligence emerging in comparative jurisdictions, improve protection, and what should it contain? (d) The comparative question. What lessons can be drawn from Kenya, Ghana and the emerging European mandatory due diligence model, and from the stalled negotiations on a binding United Nations treaty?
Significance and justification
The study is timely because Sierra Leone has just overhauled its land and mining laws, creating a legislative moment in which a business and human rights statute could be introduced. It is original because no comprehensive doctrinal study has yet mapped the post 2022 framework against the Guiding Principles and proposed a binding domestic instrument. It is practically useful to Parliament, the Human Rights Commission, civil society and affected communities.
Literature review (indicative)
The proposal will engage the foundational scholarship of John Ruggie on the corporate responsibility to respect, the critique that voluntary regimes institutionalise impunity, the African regional jurisprudence beginning with the Ogoniland decision, and the transnational line culminating in Vedanta and Okpabi. The review will identify the gap it fills: the absence of a Sierra Leone specific proposal for binding domestic law.
Methodology
The study will be doctrinal and comparative, using primary sources (the Constitution, statutes, case law and treaties) and secondary commentary, supplemented by a modest socio legal element: semi structured interviews with regulators, community representatives and company officials, and analysis of Human Rights Commission reports. It is library based and qualitative; it does not require statistical sampling. Where human subjects are interviewed, ethical clearance and informed consent will be obtained.
Scope, limitations and chapter outline
The study is confined to the extractive sector and to Sierra Leone, using comparators only to illuminate. The likely chapter structure is: (1) introduction and methodology; (2) the international and regional framework; (3) the Sierra Leonean legal and institutional landscape; (4) the enforcement gap, evidenced through case studies; (5) comparative models of binding regulation; (6) a proposed National Business and Human Rights Act and conclusion. A realistic timeline of twelve months, a short bibliography and a provisional budget complete the proposal.
Exam approach: if asked to draft a proposal, reproduce the standard architecture in order (title, background and problem, questions, significance, literature, methodology, scope and limitations, chapter outline, timeline, budget, references). The examiner is testing whether you know the anatomy of a proposal, so label each part. Choose a narrow, researchable, jurisdictionally grounded topic; a vague or purely theoretical topic loses marks.
Golden rule: a proposal persuades on three fronts: the problem is real, it is unsolved, and I can realistically solve it.
Question 2: Ethical Considerations in the Use of AI Tools to Aid Legal Research
Artificial intelligence tools, in particular large language models, now assist with case retrieval, summarising authorities, drafting and translation. They promise speed and wider access to legal materials, but they introduce ethical hazards that a researcher, and especially a legal practitioner bound by professional duties, must manage. The considerations below are the ones an examiner expects, each explained with its reason and its practical discipline.
(a) Accuracy and the hallucination problem. Generative models produce fluent text that can be confidently wrong, including fabricated case names, citations and holdings. In legal research this is acute because a non existent authority can enter a brief and mislead a court; practitioners abroad have been sanctioned for filing AI invented cases.
(b) Confidentiality and data protection. Feeding client facts, privileged communications or unpublished documents into a public AI service may disclose them to the provider and beyond. This threatens and the lawyer’s duty of confidentiality, and may breach data protection norms. The researcher should anonymise sensitive inputs, avoid uploading privileged material to open tools, and prefer services with clear confidentiality terms.
(c) Bias and distortion. Models reflect their training data, which over represents wealthy common law jurisdictions and under represents Sierra Leonean and African sources. The result can be subtly skewed research that imports foreign assumptions or misses local authority. The researcher must treat AI output as a starting hypothesis to be corrected against indigenous sources, not as a neutral statement of the law.
(d) Academic integrity and plagiarism. Submitting AI generated text as one’s own, without disclosure where disclosure is required, offends the norms of original authorship on which a thesis and an examination depend. The ethical course is transparency about the tool’s role, genuine intellectual ownership of the analysis, and compliance with the institution’s AI use policy.
(e) Accountability and the deskilling risk. Responsibility for a legal opinion cannot be delegated to a machine; the human author remains answerable. Over reliance also erodes the researcher’s own skills of reading, synthesis and judgement, which are the point of legal training. AI should augment, not replace, the researcher’s reasoning.
(f) Access to justice, equity and transparency. There is a positive ethical dimension: well governed AI can widen access to legal information for under resourced litigants and researchers. But opacity, the “black box” nature of model reasoning, and unequal access to premium tools can also entrench advantage. The ethical posture is to harness the democratising potential while insisting on verifiability and fair access.
Exam approach: structure the answer as a labelled list of distinct ethical heads, and for each give the hazard, why it matters, and the mitigating discipline. Anchor it in the lawyer’s existing professional duties (, confidentiality, candour, integrity) so the ethics are not free floating but grounded in the rules you already owe.
Golden rule: AI is a research assistant, never an authority; verify everything, disclose its use, and keep the judgement human.
Question 3: Parameters of a Concept Note and Its Significance
A concept note is the short document, usually two to five pages, that precedes a full proposal. It distils a research or project idea into its essentials so that a supervisor, funder or ethics committee can decide quickly whether the idea is worth developing.
Identifying its parameters means listing the elements it must contain; its significance lies in the gatekeeping and clarifying work it performs.
The parameters (the essential elements)
(a) Title and author details. A clear, specific working title and the identity of the proposer. (b) Background and context. A concise framing of the setting and the issue, enough to show the reader why the matter arises.
(c) Problem statement. A sharp statement of the specific problem to be addressed, distinguished from the general background; this is the heart of the note. (d)
Rationale, or significance. Why the problem matters, who is affected, and what the gap is that the work will fill.
(e) Aim and objectives. One overarching aim and a small number of specific, measurable objectives. (f) Research questions or hypotheses. The precise questions the work will answer, flowing from the objectives.
(g) Proposed methodology (in outline). The intended approach (doctrinal, empirical, comparative) and sources, stated briefly. (h) Scope and delimitation. The boundaries of the study, what is included and deliberately excluded.
(i) Expected outcomes and significance of results. What the work will produce and who will use it. (j) Indicative timeline and, where relevant, budget. A realistic schedule and resource estimate. (k) Key references. A short list of the principal sources demonstrating awareness of the field.
The significance of a concept note
Its significance is fourfold. First, it is a gatekeeping and approval instrument: supervisors and funders use it to decide whether to invest time and money before a full proposal is written, so it saves effort on both sides. Second, it is a clarifying and focusing instrument: the discipline of compressing an idea into a few pages forces the researcher to sharpen the problem and discard what is peripheral, which improves the eventual proposal. Third, it is a feasibility test: setting out method, scope, timeline and resources early exposes whether the idea is actually doable. Fourth, it is a communication and alignment instrument: it lets a funder judge fit with its priorities and lets a supervisor steer the topic before the student is committed. In short, the concept note is the low cost filter that prevents a weak or unfeasible idea from consuming the resources of a full study.
Exam approach: the verb is “identify” the parameters and “discuss” the significance, so give two clearly separated halves: a labelled list of the elements, then a reasoned discussion of what the note achieves. Do not confuse a concept note with a full proposal; the distinguishing point is brevity and its gatekeeping function.
Golden rule: a concept note is the one page that decides whether the hundred page study ever gets written.
Question 4: Legal Advisory Opinion on the Benefits of the First Year of the LLM, With Recommendations for Reform The question asks for the answer in the form of a legal advisory opinion, so the answer adopts that register: addressee, instructions, opinion, reasons and recommendations. An advisory opinion states a reasoned view on a matter referred, and here the matter referred is the value of the first year of the programme and how it might be improved.
To: The Faculty of Law, Fourah Bay College. Re: Evaluation of the first year of the LLM programme Instructions. I am asked to advise on the benefits derived from the first year of study in the Department of Human Rights, Constitutionalism and Criminal Justice, and to proffer recommendations for reform.
Opinion (summary). In my considered opinion the first year delivers substantial academic, professional and personal benefits that justify the investment, but its value is constrained by identifiable structural weaknesses that are capable of correction. I advise that the programme be retained and strengthened along the lines set out below.
Benefits gained in the first year
(a) Doctrinal depth in a coherent field. The first year moves the student beyond the survey knowledge of the LLB into sustained, source based study of human rights in their global, regional and national context, constitutional and administrative law, business and human rights, the general legal regimes and statutory interpretation of Sierra Leone, and the jurisprudence of international criminal law through the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The benefit is the capacity to read primary sources critically and to argue at postgraduate depth.
(b) Research and writing competence. The academic legal research module equips the student with the methodology of proposals, concept notes, literature review, citation and ethical research, which is the indispensable foundation for the thesis and for scholarly and professional writing thereafter.
(c) A critical and comparative outlook. The programme trains the student to place Sierra Leonean law against African regional and international standards, and to see recurring structural problems, above all the enforcement gap between rights on paper and rights in practice, which sharpens analytical judgement.
(d) Professional and practical dividend. For a practising lawyer the year feeds directly into practice: constitutional litigation, human rights advocacy, advisory work for extractive and commercial clients, and teaching. It also builds a professional network of scholars, practitioners and peers.
(e) Contribution to national legal development. By producing research on live Sierra Leonean problems, the student contributes to law reform and to the national stock of legal scholarship, which is thin and in need of indigenous voices.
Recommendations for reform
(c) Formalise research supervision early. Allocate supervisors and begin proposal development in the first semester, so that the thesis does not start cold. (d) Modernise delivery. Governed use of digital and AI research tools with explicit ethical guidance, and blended learning to accommodate working professionals.
(e) Deepen the comparative and clinical treatment of business and human
rights. Given Sierra Leone’s extractive economy, this field deserves expanded, practice linked coverage. (f) Align assessment with professional output. Reward well researched, publishable work and reduce reliance on memorisation, so that assessment mirrors the skills the profession needs.
Conclusion. The first year of the LLM is of real and demonstrable benefit and should be retained; its benefits would be materially enhanced by the reforms proposed above. This opinion is advisory and offered for the assistance of the Faculty.
Exam approach: honour the required form. Use the advisory opinion skeleton (addressee and reference, instructions, summary opinion, reasons, recommendations, conclusion). Split “benefits” and “recommendations” into two clearly labelled sections and make the recommendations respond to weaknesses implied by the benefits, so the two halves speak to each other.
Golden rule: an advisory opinion advises; take a clear position, give reasons, and recommend concrete action.
MODULE TWO: HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE REGIONAL AND NATIONAL CONTEXT
Examination rubric: answer any three. All three guideline questions are answered here.
Question 1: Key Institutional Frameworks Protecting and Promoting Human Rights in Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone protects and promotes human rights through a layered institutional architecture: a constitutional foundation, specialised national institutions, the ordinary organs of state, civil society, and the regional and international mechanisms to which the country has subscribed. An examiner wants the candidate to map these and to assess, candidly, how well each works.
The constitutional foundation
The bedrock is Chapter III of the Constitution of Sierra Leone 1991, sections 15 to 30, which entrenches the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual: the right to life, to personal liberty, to protection from arbitrary arrest and detention, to a fair trial, to freedom of expression, movement, assembly, association and conscience, and to protection from discrimination. Section 28 makes these rights justiciable by conferring on the Supreme Court original to hear applications for redress, and section 171(15) establishes constitutional supremacy, voiding any inconsistent law. The Constitution is thus the first and most important institutional guarantee, because it turns moral claims into enforceable legal rights.
The specialised national human rights institution
The principal dedicated body is the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone, established by the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone Act 2004 on the recommendation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and now an “A” status accredited national human rights institution. It investigates violations on complaint or on its own motion, enjoys High Court like powers to summon witnesses and compel documents, has statutory access to prisons and places of detention, educates the public, advises government, and publishes an annual State of Human Rights report. Its structural weakness is that it issues recommendations only; it cannot itself enforce, which is a theme returned to below.
The ordinary organs of state
(a) The Judiciary. The Superior Court of Judicature, the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal and High Court, enforces rights through the section 28 jurisdiction and through the High Court’s supervisory jurisdiction over inferior tribunals and public authorities.
(b) Parliament. As the supreme legislative authority it enacts rights protecting statutes, domesticates treaties (dualism requires ratification and domestication), and exercises oversight. (c) The Executive and specialised bodies. The Attorney General and Ministry of Justice, the Office of the Ombudsman, the Anti Corruption Commission, which may prosecute corruption without the fiat of the Attorney General, the Legal Aid Board established under the Legal Aid Act 2012, which widens access to justice for the poor, the Independent Police Complaints Board, and the Independent Media Commission, which since 2020 regulates the press following the repeal of criminal .
Civil society and the free press
Non governmental organisations, the Sierra Leone Bar Association, Prison Watch, the Centre for Accountability and the , and a vigorous independent media perform indispensable monitoring, advocacy and litigation functions. Their role is institutional in substance even though they are non state actors, as the litigation history below demonstrates.
The regional and international layer
Sierra Leone is party to the principal instruments: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants on Civil and Political and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. These are supervised by United Nations treaty bodies, the Universal Periodic Review, the African Commission and Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and, importantly for West Africa, the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States, whose human rights jurisdiction individuals may invoke directly. Critical assessment. The framework is, on paper, comprehensive and modern. Its persistent defect is enforcement: the Human Rights Commission can only recommend, treaty bodies and even the ECOWAS Court depend on state cooperation for compliance, and resource constraints limit the reach of courts and the Legal Aid Board. The architecture promotes rights well and protects them unevenly.
Exam approach: organise by layer (constitutional, specialised NHRI, ordinary organs, civil society, regional and international) rather than listing bodies at random. Name the enabling statute for each institution, and close with a critical paragraph on the enforcement deficit; the examiner rewards evaluation, not a mere catalogue.
Golden rule: Sierra Leone is rich in rights institutions and poor in enforcement power; map the layers, then expose the gap.
Question 2: Three Human Rights Jurisprudence of the Superior Courts of Sierra Leone and Their Significance
The three decisions below are chosen because together they trace an arc in the development of a rights culture: from judicial restraint, through a contested constitutional removal that exposed the national and regional interface, to a robust modern vindication of civil liberties. Each is taught in the case format of facts, issue, decision, principle and significance.
Case one: Sierra Leone Association of Journalists v Attorney-General and Minister of Justice (Supreme Court, 10 November 2009)
Facts. The Sierra Leone Association of Journalists challenged the criminal and seditious libel provisions in Part V of the Public Order Act 1965, under which journalists had repeatedly been arrested and detained, as inconsistent with freedom of expression under section 25 of the Constitution.
Issue. Whether the criminalisation of defamatory and seditious publication contravened the entrenched right to freedom of expression, or whether it was saved by the permissible restriction in section 25(2).
Decision. The Supreme Court declined to strike the provisions down. It held that they were preserved as “existing law” by the transitional provisions, fell within the section 25(2) restriction protecting reputation and public order, and that freedom of expression is not unlimited. It also dismissed the action on standing grounds, holding that the Association had not shown a sufficient personal interest. The Court said that reform of the law was a matter for Parliament, “another forum”, not for the Court.
Principle and significance. The case illustrates both the limits of judicial activism and the complementary role of the legislature. Its true significance is seen in its sequel: what the Court declined to do in 2009, Parliament did in 2020, repealing Part V of the Public Order Act and enacting the Independent Media Commission Act, on the recommendation of, among others, the Human Rights Commission and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The lesson for a rights culture is that courts are not the only, or always the best, engine of reform, and that sustained civil society advocacy can achieve through the legislature what litigation cannot.
Case two: Sam-Sumana v Attorney-General (Supreme Court, 2015) and the ECOWAS Court sequel (2017)
Facts. In 2015 President Koroma unilaterally removed Vice-President Samuel Sam-Sumana from office after the latter’s expulsion from the ruling party. Sam-Sumana challenged the removal as unconstitutional, contending that the President could not remove an elected Vice-President except by the impeachment procedure in the Constitution.
Issue. Whether the President had constitutional power to remove the Vice-President without parliamentary impeachment, and whether the removal violated the applicant’s rights.
Decision. The Supreme Court of Sierra Leone, sitting as a panel of five, held that the President had acted within his constitutional powers and upheld the removal. Sam-Sumana then applied to the Community Court of Justice of ECOWAS, which in November 2017 held that the removal violated his fundamental rights to a fair hearing and to participate in the political affairs of his country, guaranteed by Articles 7 and 13 of the African Charter, and ordered Sierra Leone to pay his withheld salary and emoluments.
Principle and significance. The case is the leading modern illustration of the interface between national and regional human rights protection, and of the enforcement gap that is the spine of this note. The domestic court resolved the constitutional question against the ; the regional court found a rights violation; but Sierra Leone declined to recognise the ECOWAS judgment, asserting that its own Supreme Court had spoken. The significance for a rights culture is double edged: it demonstrates that West Africans now have a direct regional remedy for rights violations, and simultaneously that such remedies are only as strong as a state’s willingness to comply. It is the clearest home grown example of why binding frameworks require credible enforcement.
Case three: Augustine Sorie-Sengbe Marrah v Inspector-General of Police SLSC 1
Facts. On election day in March 2018 the Inspector-General of Police, by press release, banned the movement of vehicles not accredited by the electoral commission. The , a barrister and registered voter, was stopped, his vehicle and keys seized, and he was detained at a police station until after the polls closed, so that he could not vote.
Issue. Whether the ban and the plaintiff’s detention violated his rights to personal liberty and protection from arbitrary arrest (section 17), freedom of movement (section 18), protection from deprivation of property (section 21) and the right to vote (section 31).
Decision. The Supreme Court held that the ban was unconstitutional, null and void, and that the stop, detention and seizure violated sections 17, 18 and 21, and had unlawfully obstructed the plaintiff’s right to vote. The core reasoning was the principle of legality: only Parliament, and the President during a lawfully declared state of emergency under section 29, may restrict constitutional freedoms. A police press release has no force of law, and an executive official who purports to suspend or alter constitutional rights acts outside his powers; the Court observed that such usurpation of the legislative function is, under section 108(8), deemed an act of treason.
Principle and significance. Marrah is the strongest modern affirmation by the Sierra Leonean Supreme Court of the rule of law and the protection of civil and political rights. It also liberalised standing: the Court held that a citizen need not show an injury different from that suffered by the public, expressly moving away from the restrictive test in the old case of Nancy Steele v Attorney-General. For the building of a rights culture its significance is that it tells every official that constitutional rights cannot be curtailed by administrative fiat, and it tells every citizen that the courts will vindicate liberty, movement, property and the vote. It is the natural counterpoint to the restraint of the 2009 journalists’ case.
Overall significance of the trio. Read together the three cases narrate the maturing of the rights culture: judicial caution in 2009 cured by legislative reform in 2020; a 2015 constitutional contest that exposed the national and regional enforcement interface; and a 2022 vindication that entrenched legality and widened access to the courts. The through line is that rights become real only when some institution, court, parliament or regional body is both willing and able to enforce them.
Exam approach: teach each case in the IRAC sequence (facts, issue, decision, principle) and devote the final beat to significance, because the question expressly asks for significance in building a rights culture. Choose cases that make an argument together rather than three unconnected decisions, and always state the court and whether the authority is binding (the Sierra Leonean Supreme Court) or persuasive or regional (the ECOWAS Court).
Golden rule: a case is only worth citing if you can state its ratio in one sentence and its significance in the next: 2009 restraint, 2017 the enforcement gap, 2022 the rule of law vindicated.
Question 3: Key Challenges Impeding the Effective Protection and Promotion of Human Rights in Sierra Leone
Despite a modern constitutional and institutional framework, the lived enjoyment of rights in Sierra Leone remains uneven. The challenges below are the ones most defensible in an examination, each stated with its mechanism and, where possible, an authority or recent reform that illustrates it.
(a) The enforcement gap. The central challenge is that rights exist on paper without reliable machinery to vindicate them. The Human Rights Commission can only recommend; the state has declined to comply with adverse regional rulings, as in the Sam-Sumana ECOWAS decision; and even favourable domestic judgments are slow and costly to obtain. Recognition outruns enforcement.
(b) Poverty, inequality and the weakness of socio-economic rights. The Chapter II directive principles of state policy, which contain the social and economic aspirations, are expressly non justiciable, so rights to health, education, housing and a clean environment are not directly enforceable. Mass poverty also means most citizens cannot afford to litigate, blunting even the justiciable civil and political rights.
(c) Limited access to justice. Courts are concentrated in Freetown, legal representation is scarce and expensive, and although the Legal Aid Act 2012 created a Legal Aid Board, its reach is limited by funding. Legal pluralism compounds this: the customary law that governs most of the provinces can conflict with constitutional guarantees, particularly for women, and the section 27(4) exemption of customary and personal law from the non-discrimination clause institutionalises that tension.
(d) Weak institutional capacity and independence. The Human Rights Commission, the judiciary, the Legal Aid Board and oversight bodies are under resourced and, in practice, vulnerable to executive influence, which erodes both their effectiveness and public confidence.
(e) Executive overreach and abuse by security forces. As the Marrah case shows, officials may curtail rights by administrative fiat, and police use of excessive force, arbitrary arrest and prolonged pre-trial detention persist. Prison overcrowding and poor conditions, documented repeatedly by the Human Rights Commission and Prison Watch, violate the right to dignity.
(f) Low rights literacy and harmful social norms. Many citizens, especially in rural areas, are unaware of their rights or of how to claim them, and entrenched practices, including those that disadvantage women and children, resist formal legal protection.
(g) Gaps between obligation and domestication. Because Sierra Leone is dualist, treaties it ratifies do not become enforceable domestic law until Parliament domesticates them; delay in domestication leaves international commitments unenforceable at home.
A balancing note. These challenges must be set against real progress: the 2020 repeal of criminal libel, the abolition of the death by the Abolition of the Death Penalty Act 2021, the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Act 2022, and the Marrah decision. The trajectory is positive; the challenge is to close the distance between declaration and delivery.
Exam approach: lead with the enforcement gap as the organising challenge and group the rest beneath it (resource, access, capacity, abuse, literacy, domestication). Support each with a concrete authority or recent event, and finish with a short balancing paragraph acknowledging progress; a one-sided answer that ignores reform is less persuasive.
Golden rule: the problem is rarely the absence of rights on paper; it is poverty, access, capacity and the will to enforce.
MODULE THREE: BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS LAW
Examination rubric: answer any three of the four. All four guideline questions are answered here.
Question 1: Key Institutional Frameworks Providing Oversight on Business and Human Rights in Sierra Leone
Business and human rights oversight in Sierra Leone is not concentrated in a single dedicated regulator; it is distributed across the constitutional guarantees, a cluster of sectoral regulators (concentrated in the extractive industries), human rights and anti corruption bodies, labour and environmental authorities, and the international soft law standards the country has accepted. The candidate should map these and judge their adequacy.
The constitutional and human rights baseline
Chapter III of the Constitution binds the state to protect rights, and the state’s duty to protect against abuse by third parties, including businesses, is the first pillar of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone, under its 2004 Act, can investigate corporate related violations and recommend remedies, and is the natural domestic monitor of the business and human rights field.
The extractive sector regulators
(a) The National Minerals Agency administers and regulates mineral licences, now under the National Minerals Agency Act 2023 and the Mines and Minerals Development Act 2022, which replaced the Mines and Minerals Act 2009 and expressly requires transparent and accountable management, improved employment practices and the welfare of communities affected by mining, and measures to reduce harm to life, property and the environment. (b) The Environment Protection Agency requires environmental impact assessment and licensing for extractive and industrial projects, a key site of oversight for pollution and displacement harms. (c) The Extractive Industries Revenue Act 2018 and the Sierra Leone Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative promote transparency in payments and revenues, addressing the governance dimension of corporate accountability. (d) The Local Content Agency Act 2016 requires the use of Sierra Leonean labour, goods and services, linking business activity to local benefit.
Land governance
The Customary Land Rights Act 2022 and the National Land Commission Act 2022 are, for business and human rights, the most significant recent reforms. The Customary Land Rights Act protects customary land rights, guarantees women’s equal access to land, bans industrial development in ecologically sensitive areas, and, remarkably, requires an investor to obtain the free, prior and informed consent of the adult men and women of an affected community before acquiring their land, with statutory rules on displacement and resettlement. This is a rare instance of a binding domestic human rights safeguard directly disciplining corporate land acquisition.
Labour, anti-corruption and company law
The labour inspectorate of the Ministry of Labour supervises working conditions, child labour and safety; the Anti-Corruption Commission addresses the bribery that so often accompanies large projects; and the Companies Act and the investment promotion architecture frame corporate formation and conduct. A central and examinable tension lives here: the Child Rights Act 2007 sets the minimum age for hazardous work such as mining at eighteen, while the older Employers and Employees Act 1960 permitted lighter mining work from sixteen, a conflict that illustrates the incoherence oversight must resolve. The international and regional overlay Oversight is reinforced by the Guiding Principles, the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the ILO Tripartite Declaration and the African Charter, interpreted in the Ogoniland decision to impose a duty on states to protect communities from corporate harm. These are mostly soft law, which is the oversight system’s weakness.
Critical assessment. The framework is fragmented and reactive. Oversight is scattered across many bodies with no single business and human rights regulator, enforcement powers are thin, the Human Rights Commission can only recommend, and the strongest instrument, mandatory free, prior and informed consent, is very new and untested. The 2022 land and mining reforms are a real advance, but coherent, binding oversight of corporate human rights conduct remains a work in progress.
Exam approach: do not simply list agencies; group them (constitutional and human rights, extractive regulators, land, labour and anti-corruption, international overlay) and name each enabling statute. Use the Customary Land Rights Act 2022 free, prior and informed consent requirement and the Child Rights Act versus Employers and Employees Act conflict as your standout concrete examples, then assess the fragmentation.
Golden rule: oversight exists but is scattered and soft; the 2022 land and mining laws are the sharpest new teeth.
Question 2: Three Business and Human Rights Jurisprudence and Their Significance
Domestic Sierra Leonean business and human rights case law is thin, so the strongest answer draws on decisions that arose from Sierra Leonean or comparable African facts and shaped the field. The three below show, respectively, the limits of tort against companies, the foundational African regional duty to protect, and the modern opening of parent company liability.
Case one: Kadie Kalma & Others v African Minerals Ltd & Others EWCA Civ 144 (Sierra Leonean facts)
Facts. Inhabitants of Tonkolili in northern Sierra Leone, 142 claimants, sued the UK domiciled parent and its subsidiaries operating an iron ore mine, over two episodes in 2010 and 2012 in which the Sierra Leone Police used excessive force, killing, injuring and abusing residents who had protested and blocked roads. The company had provided the police with accommodation, vehicles and cash.
Issue. Whether the company was liable, in or for procuring or being accessory to the police conduct, for the human rights harms inflicted by state security forces it had supported.
Decision. The claims failed at trial and on appeal. The courts found that company employees committed no unlawful acts and that there was no instigation, direction or procuring of the police. Applying the three stage test in Caparo v Dickman, the Court of Appeal held it would not be fair, just and reasonable to impose on the company a duty to protect a large population from their own police force.
Significance. Kalma exposes the central weakness of relying on ordinary tort to hold companies accountable for complicity in state abuses: foreseeability of harm is not enough, and courts are reluctant to make a company the guarantor against a state’s own forces. For building a culture of compliance its lesson is cautionary: without a binding due diligence duty, companies that enable abuse through payments and logistics can escape liability. It is the strongest argument in the Sierra Leonean context for mandatory human rights due diligence rather than reliance on litigation after the fact.
Case two: Social and Economic Rights Action Centre (SERAC) v Nigeria (2001), African Commission
Facts. The Ogoni people of the Niger Delta complained that the Nigerian state oil company and its multinational partners had, with the complicity of the military government, contaminated land and water, destroyed homes and villages, and attacked communities resisting oil operations.
Issue. Whether Nigeria violated the African Charter by its own conduct and by failing to protect the Ogoni from harm caused by oil companies.
Decision. The African Commission held Nigeria in violation of multiple Charter rights, including the rights to health and to a general satisfactory environment, and read into the Charter implied rights to housing and food. Crucially it held that the state’s duty includes a positive obligation to protect rights holders against harmful acts by private parties, including corporations, and to regulate and hold companies to account.
Significance. SERAC is the foundational African business and human rights decision and is persuasive for Sierra Leonean courts interpreting the Charter rights to which the country is bound. It established in African jurisprudence the state duty to protect that became Pillar I of the Guiding Principles a decade later, and it recognised environmental and socio-economic rights as justiciable at the regional level. For a compliance culture it anchors the principle that extractive harm is a human rights matter, not merely an economic or environmental one.
Case three: Vedanta Resources plc v Lungowe UKSC 20 (comparative)
Facts. Zambian villagers sued the UK parent company and its Zambian copper mining subsidiary in England for pollution of their water. The preliminary issue was whether the English courts had jurisdiction and whether the parent could owe a .
Decision and significance. The UK Supreme Court held that a parent company may owe a direct duty of care to those affected by its subsidiary’s operations where it exercises sufficient control or holds itself out as supervising, and allowed the claim to proceed in England. Decided after Kalma was argued, Vedanta, together with Okpabi, marks a cautious opening of the door that Kalma found shut, recognising parent company responsibility across borders. Its significance for compliance is that it tells multinationals operating in Sierra Leone and across Africa that structuring harm through a local subsidiary is no longer a guaranteed shield, which is itself an incentive to embed due diligence.
Overall significance of the trio. Together the cases frame the field: SERAC establishes the regional duty to protect; Kalma shows how far short domestic tort falls when a company merely enables abuse; and Vedanta shows the emerging transnational route to parent company accountability. The composite lesson, and the examinable argument, is that case law is moving, unevenly, towards corporate accountability, but that reliable compliance will come from binding duties rather than the fortunes of litigation.
Exam approach: be candid that Sierra Leone has little domestic business and human rights case law, then justify your comparative and regional choices, making clear which authority is binding, persuasive (SERAC under the Charter) or merely comparative (Vedanta). Use the three to tell one story about the drift towards corporate accountability, and tie it to the Guiding Principles three pillars.
Golden rule: SERAC built the duty to protect, Kalma showed tort is not enough, Vedanta cracked the parent-company shield, and all point to binding due diligence.
Question 3: The Resource Curse: Why a Resource-Rich Sierra Leone Remains Poor, and How to Escape It Sierra Leone exports diamonds, iron ore, rutile, bauxite and gold, yet ranks among the poorest countries on earth. This is the paradox that scholars call the resource curse: the observation that mineral rich developing states often grow more slowly, govern worse and suffer more conflict than resource poor ones. The question asks the candidate to diagnose the causes and prescribe the cure.
The factors responsible
(a) Economic distortion (Dutch disease and volatility). Concentration on mineral exports inflates the currency and starves agriculture and manufacturing of investment, while dependence on volatile commodity prices produces boom and bust. Sierra Leone’s iron ore sector collapsed in 2014 to 2015 when prices fell and the Ebola crisis struck, and the two largest producers failed, illustrating the fragility of a mineral dependent economy.
(b) Weak governance, corruption and rent seeking. Large mineral rents create powerful incentives to capture rather than create wealth. Opaque licensing, under taxation of companies, illicit financial flows and the smuggling of diamonds divert value from the public purse into private and official pockets.
(c) Conflict and the political economy of extraction. Minerals can finance and prolong violence. Sierra Leone’s civil war of 1991 to 2002 was sustained by “blood diamonds”, the textbook demonstration that lootable resources can fund insurgency and entrench predatory politics.
(d) Enclave extraction and weak linkages. Mining is capital intensive, employs few locals, and operates as an enclave with limited linkages to the domestic economy, so the headline export figures do not translate into broad based jobs or development.
(e) Environmental and social harm to host communities. Displacement, land loss, pollution and the breakdown of livelihoods impose the costs of extraction on the poorest, as the Tonkolili and Malen experiences show, while the benefits accrue elsewhere.
(f) Weak institutions and the enforcement gap. Fragmented regulators, limited state capacity and poor enforcement mean that even good laws under deliver, which returns the analysis to the spine of this note.
How Sierra Leone can escape the cycle
(a) Transparency and accountable revenue management. Full implementation of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and the Extractive Industries Revenue Act 2018, publication of contracts, and robust anti corruption enforcement so that rents reach the treasury and the public. (b) Fair fiscal terms and a sovereign wealth or stabilisation mechanism. Renegotiated royalties and taxes, and the saving of windfalls to smooth volatility and fund future generations.
(c) Economic diversification and local linkages. Deliberate investment of mineral revenue in agriculture, fisheries, tourism, human capital and infrastructure, and enforcement of the Local Content Agency Act 2016 so that extraction feeds domestic enterprise and jobs. (d) Strong, binding community safeguards. Full use of the Customary Land Rights Act 2022 free, prior and informed consent and resettlement rules, and of environmental impact assessment, so that host communities share benefits and are protected from harm.
(e) Institutional strengthening and the rule of law. Capacitated and independent regulators, an empowered Human Rights Commission, and credible courts, so that the enforcement gap narrows. (f) Value addition. Moving up the value chain from raw export to processing, to capture more value domestically.
Conclusion. The curse is not geological but institutional; it is a failure of governance, not of endowment. Botswana’s diamond led development shows that resource wealth can be a blessing where institutions are strong, revenue is transparently managed and saved, and the economy is diversified. Sierra Leone’s escape lies in transparency, fair fiscal terms, diversification, binding community protection and institutional strength.
Exam approach: give two clearly separated halves (factors, then solutions) and make the solutions mirror the factors. Ground the diagnosis in Sierra Leonean evidence (blood diamonds, the 2014–15 iron ore and Ebola collapse, Tonkolili) rather than generic theory, and close with the institutional thesis and a positive comparator such as Botswana.
Golden rule: the resource curse is a governance failure, not a geology problem; the cure is transparency, diversification, binding safeguards and strong institutions.
Question 4: Can National Legislation on Business and Human Rights Make a Difference?
The question invites a reasoned position. The position argued here, consistent with the spine of this note, is that national legislation can make a decisive difference, because binding domestic law with enforcement and remedy succeeds precisely where voluntary and international soft law has failed, provided it is well designed and genuinely enforced.
Why voluntary and international frameworks under-protect
The United Nations Guiding Principles, the OECD Guidelines and sectoral codes rest on the corporate responsibility to respect, which is not, in itself, legally binding. The proposed binding United Nations treaty on business and human rights has stalled for years. International law also struggles with jurisdiction and enforcement across borders, as Kalma showed. The result is a governance gap that voluntary commitment has not closed.
What binding national legislation can add
(a) Enforceability and remedy. A national statute can convert the responsibility to respect into a legal duty, create offences and civil liability, and give affected communities a domestic cause of action and remedy, which is Pillar III of the Guiding Principles. (b) Mandatory human rights due diligence. Legislation can require companies to identify, prevent, and account for their human rights impacts, moving from voluntary to compulsory, as the emerging European mandatory due diligence model does. (c) Certainty and a level playing field. Clear statutory duties bind all companies equally, removing the competitive disadvantage of the responsible firm and the escape route of the irresponsible one.
(d) Localisation and legitimacy. National law can be tailored to Sierra Leone’s extractive realities, land tenure and customary structures, as the Customary Land Rights Act 2022 already does in miniature by making free, prior and informed consent a legal requirement rather than a voluntary good practice. That single provision shows, in domestic law, that legislation can discipline corporate conduct where codes of conduct do not.
The necessary caveats
Legislation is necessary but not sufficient. It makes a difference only if it is enforced; an unenforced statute joins the paper rights that already crowd Sierra Leone’s statute book. Three conditions must hold: first, institutional capacity and independent regulators and courts to apply it; second, access to justice and remedy for affected communities, since rights without accessible remedies are hollow; and third, political will and resistance to capture by powerful investors. The Sam-Sumana episode is the reminder that even binding adjudication fails without the will to comply.
Conclusion. Yes, a national business and human rights law can make a real difference, and indeed is the most promising route to disciplining corporate conduct in Sierra Leone, because it supplies the binding force and the domestic remedy that voluntary and international frameworks lack. But its difference is conditional on enforcement, access to remedy and political will. Sierra Leone should enact a dedicated business and human rights statute with mandatory human rights due diligence, while building the institutions that can enforce it.
Exam approach: take a clear position (national legislation can make a difference) and defend it with the binding-versus-voluntary argument, then earn the top marks by honestly stating the caveats (enforcement, remedy, political will). Use the Customary Land Rights Act 2022 as your proof that domestic legislation already disciplines corporate conduct, and end with a concrete recommendation.
Golden rule: binding law beats voluntary codes, but only if it is enforced; legislation is the lever, enforcement is the hand that pulls it.
Select Bibliography
Citations marked for verification carry a note in the relevant footnote.
Legislation and Constitutional Instruments (Sierra Leone)
Constitution of Sierra Leone 1991 (Act No 6 of 1991).
Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone Act 2004 (Act No 9 of 2004).
Public Order Act 1965 (Act No 46 of 1965), Part V (criminal and seditious libel, repealed 2020).
Independent Media Commission Act 2020.
Legal Aid Act 2012 (Act No 6 of 2012).
Anti-Corruption Act 2008 (Act No 12 of 2008), as amended 2019.
Abolition of the Death Penalty Act 2021 (Act No 12 of 2021).
Mines and Minerals Development Act 2022 (Act No 16 of 2022).
National Minerals Agency Act 2023.
Customary Land Rights Act 2022 (Act No 20 of 2022).
National Land Commission Act 2022 (Act No 19 of 2022).
Local Content Agency Act 2016.
Extractive Industries Revenue Act 2018.
Environment Protection Agency Act 2008, as amended.
Child Rights Act 2007.
Employers and Employees Act 1960.
Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Act 2022.
Cases
Augustine Sorie-Sengbe Marrah v Inspector-General of Police (SC APP 8 of 2018) SLSC 1 (21 April 2022).
Sierra Leone Association of Journalists v Attorney-General and Minister of Justice (Supreme Court of Sierra Leone, 10 November 2009).
Sam-Sumana v Attorney-General and Victor Bockarie Foh (Supreme Court of Sierra Leone, 2015).
Sam-Sumana v Republic of Sierra Leone (ECW/CCJ/APP/38/16, ECOWAS Community Court of Justice, 27 November 2017).
Nancy Steele v Attorney-General, Tejan-Sie and Koroma ALR SL 1 (High Court).
Kadie Kalma & Ors v African Minerals Ltd & Ors EWCA Civ 144; affirming EWHC 3506 (QB).
Social and Economic Rights Action Centre (SERAC) and Another v Nigeria (2001) Communication 155/96 (African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights).
Vedanta Resources plc v Lungowe UKSC 20.
Okpabi v Royal Dutch Shell plc UKSC 3.
Caparo Industries plc v Dickman 2 AC 605 (HL).
International and Regional Instruments
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted 10 December 1948) UNGA Res 217 A(III).
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (adopted 16 December 1966, entered into force 23 March 1976) 999 UNTS 171.
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (adopted 16 December 1966, entered into force 3 January 1976) 993 UNTS 3.
African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (adopted 27 June 1981, entered into force 21 October 1986) (Banjul Charter).
Protocol A/SP1/12/01 amending the Protocol on the Community Court of Justice of ECOWAS (2005).
Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework (2011), endorsed by Human Rights Council Resolution 17/4.
OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct (2023 edn).
ILO Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy.
Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights (2000).
Secondary Sources
Dicey, A V. (1959). Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (10th ed.). Macmillan.
Ruggie, J G. (2013). Just Business: Multinational Corporations and Human Rights. W Norton.
Auty, R M. (1993). Sustaining Development in Mineral Economies: The Resource Curse Thesis. Routledge.
Collier, P. (2007). The Bottom Billion. Oxford University Press.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone. (2004). Witness to Truth: Report of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone. Annual State of Human Rights in Sierra Leone Reports.
End of Note
Prepared as an LLM examination preparation and teaching note.
See the facts recounted in Kadie Kalma & Ors v African Minerals Ltd & Ors EWCA Civ 144, concerning the Tonkolili iron ore operation, and the longstanding land disputes at Malen Chiefdom, Pujehun.
Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework (2011), endorsed by Human Rights Council Resolution 17/4 (16 June 2011).
John Gerard Ruggie, Just Business: Multinational Corporations and Human Rights (W Norton 2013).
Social and Economic Rights Action Centre (SERAC) and Another v Nigeria (2001) Communication 155/96, African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
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Vedanta Resources plc v Lungowe UKSC 20; Okpabi v Royal Dutch Shell plc UKSC 3.
Constitution of Sierra Leone 1991 (Act No 6 of 1991), Chapter III, ss 15–30.
Ibid, ss 28 and 171(15).
Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone Act 2004 (Act No 9 of 2004); the Commission commenced operations in 2007 and holds “A” status accreditation under the Paris Principles.
Ibid, functions and powers provisions; the Commission reports annually to the President and Parliament and publishes the report.
Anti-Corruption Act 2008 (Act No 12 of 2008), as amended in 2019.
Legal Aid Act 2012 (Act No 6 of 2012).
Independent Media Commission Act 2020, which replaced Part V of the Public Order Act 1965 (criminal and seditious libel).
African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (adopted 27 June 1981, entered into force 21 October 1986) (Banjul Charter).
Protocol A/SP1/12/01 amending the Protocol on the Community Court of Justice conferred human rights jurisdiction on the ECOWAS Court; see Sam-Sumana v Republic of Sierra Leone (ECW/CCJ/APP/38/16, 27 November 2017).
Sierra Leone Association of Journalists v Attorney-General and Minister of Justice and Minister of Information, Broadcasting and Communications (Supreme Court of Sierra Leone, judgment delivered 10 November 2009) per Tejan-Jalloh CJ.
Independent Media Commission Act 2020; Part V of the Public Order Act 1965 was repealed by Parliament on 23 July 2020 and assented to on 28 October 2020.
Sam-Sumana v Republic of Sierra Leone (ECW/CCJ/APP/38/16, ECOWAS Community Court of Justice, 27 November 2017).
Augustine Sorie-Sengbe Marrah v Inspector-General of Police (SC APP 8 of 2018) SLSC 1 (21 April 2022).
Nancy Steele v Attorney-General, Tejan-Sie and Koroma ALR SL 1 (High Court); the Marrah Court held that a citizen whose own rights are infringed need not show injury peculiar to himself.
Constitution of Sierra Leone 1991, s 27(4), which excepts customary and personal law from the general prohibition of discrimination.
Abolition of the Death Penalty Act 2021 (Act No 12 of 2021).
Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (2011), Pillar I (the State duty to protect), Pillar II (the corporate responsibility to respect) and Pillar III (access to remedy).
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Mines and Minerals Development Act 2022 (Act No 16 of 2022), which repealed and replaced the Mines and Minerals Act 2009; National Minerals Agency Act 2023, replacing the National Minerals Agency Act 2012.
Environment Protection Agency Act 2008, as amended.
Customary Land Rights Act 2022 (Act No 20 of 2022); National Land Commission Act 2022 (Act No 19 of 2022). The free, prior and informed consent requirement has been described as globally unprecedented in a national statute.
Child Rights Act 2007, s 128 (minimum age of eighteen for mining); contrast the Employers and Employees Act 1960, s 54(2). This statutory conflict is a recurring business and human rights examination point; candidates should check whether later employment legislation has resolved it before relying on the 1960 Act.
Kadie Kalma & Ors v African Minerals Ltd & Ors EWCA Civ 144, affirming EWHC 3506 (QB) (Turner J).
Social and Economic Rights Action Centre (SERAC) and Another v Nigeria (2001) Communication 155/96, African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Vedanta Resources plc v Lungowe UKSC 20; see also Okpabi v Royal Dutch Shell plc UKSC 3, applying the same approach to Nigerian claimants.
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