AU Watch also offers customized short courses to academic institutions, national and international bodies and NGOs from around the world. In the past lawyers, university students, human rights activists, journalists, NGO members people with an interest in human rights have also benefitted from such bespoke courses.
Many prisons officials know almost everything about the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, theDeclaration on the Basic Rights of Prisoners and the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for non-custodial measures (the ‘Tokyo Rules’). Using those standards, some African countries have made significant progress in reforming penal systems by addressing overcrowding and implementing reintegration programmes.

However how many prisons officials know enough about the Ouagadougou Declaration and Plan of Action on Accelerating Prisons and Penal Reforms in Africa, or the 1996 Kampala Declaration on Prison Conditions, or the specific standards on alternatives to imprisonment contained in the 1997 Kadoma Declaration on Community Service Orders in Africa; or even about the 1999 good prison administration as set out in the Arusha Declaration on Good Prison Practice? How many prisons officials are aware of the recognition given to these African standards by the United Nations?

A key aim of the course isto popularise and evaluate the contribution of the African standards to penal reform. The course is, therefore, mindful of the key role played by Africans in formulating an agenda for penal reform through the 1999 Egham Conference on ‘A New Approach for Penal Reform in a New Century’. It will also explain and critique steps that have been taken to implement these standards at an African level through the activities of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and its Special Rapporteur on Prisons and Conditions of Detention and also at the level of Member States.

The course emphasises the importance of a criminal justice policy that controls the growth of the prison population and encourages the use of alternatives to imprisonment as recommended by the participants at the second pan-African Conference on Prison and Penal Reform in Africa, held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso between 18-20 September 2002/

A key aim of this short course,which can be tailored to suit various prison administrations, isto popularise and evaluate the contribution of African standards to penal reform.