Construction of the Sh61 billion African Court in Tanzania on Human and People’s Rights (AfCHPR) headquarters is finally poised to start after a Chinese contractor was selected for the enormous project yesterday.
Construction will be done in the Laki Laki area on the outskirts of Arusha by the Chinese company CRJE (East Africa) Limited. The main civil works will be finished in two years. According to AfCHPR officials, Tanzania, the project’s host nation, has raised Sh9 billion of the project’s total Sh61 billion cost.
The move of the construction site pleased Lady Justice Imani Aboud, President of the Pan African Court, and her staff members felt relieved. “This has been 16 years in the making. We’ve been waiting for this,” she said at the site.
She claimed that the new location of the Court would be welcoming to the more than 150 employees of the African Union’s judicial body. “We are pleased that the Tanzanian government kept its word. We value the host government’s offer of land,” she added.
Around 150 people work for the Court, 80 to 90 of them are legal professionals. The remaining employees are support staff, the most of them are from Tanzania.
The UN Tribunal, another illustrious court that is now deliberating cases involving the Rwanda genocide accused, is located close to the proposed headquarters of the Court. The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), on the other hand, is about to close.
