Documentation. This article records a proceeding before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the treaty status of the State concerned, and what is and is not on the public record. Proceedings before the Commission are confidential until it decides. Silence is not evidence of inaction.
On 5 June 2026 five organisations filed a complaint against the Republic of Equatorial Guinea at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. They act for fourteen people sent there from the United States. Every one of the fourteen had been granted protection by an American immigration judge against return to their own country. None of them has any connection to Equatorial Guinea. Three months later the Commission has announced nothing.
Who filed, and against whom
The complainants are the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa, the Pan African Lawyers Union, EG Justice, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta and the Global Strategic Litigation Council. The respondent is the Government of Equatorial Guinea.
The fourteen were part of a group of about thirty-two people transferred under a bilateral arrangement between the United States and Equatorial Guinea. The Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa described them in these words:
Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa, June 2026. “on behalf of 14 individuals expelled from the United States to Equatorial Guinea under a secretive bilateral transfer agreement. The clients represented in the lawsuit were among a group of about 32 individuals transferred under this agreement, none of whom have any connection to Equatorial Guinea. All of them had been granted international protection by the United States.”
That last sentence is the point on which the complaint turns. These were not people whose claims had failed. They were people whose claims had succeeded.
At the time of filing, eight of the fourteen were still held at the hotel in Malabo. Three had been removed in December 2025 and March 2026. Six had been returned to their countries of origin in the week before the complaint was filed, and three of those had been sent back to Malabo again and were described as effectively stateless.
What is alleged
The complaint alleges return to persecution, and onward return through a second country to the country a person fled, which is commonly called chain refoulement. It alleges denial of access to asylum procedures in Equatorial Guinea, arbitrary and indefinite detention, denial of legal counsel, and conditions including malaria, typhoid, withheld medication for chronic conditions and absent sanitation. It also raises treatment in United States custody before the flights, including shackling, deception and coercion onto aircraft.
The Coalition notes what it cannot state. The complaint itself has not been published. The five organisations say background materials are available on request. No communication number has been made public, and no list of the African Charter articles invoked. Anyone who supplies either is going beyond the record.
What was asked for, and what has happened
The complaint asked the Commission for urgent measures while it considers the case. In the complainants’ own words:
Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa, June 2026. “The lawsuit asks the African Commission to issue urgent precautionary measures to prevent irreparable harm to the applicants while the case is under consideration. These measures include suspending any further removals of the applicants, guaranteeing immediate access to legal counsel, ensuring that the detention conditions comply with international human rights standards, including access to healthcare, nutrition and other basic necessities, and ordering an urgent review of all transfers carried out under the bilateral agreement.”
That request falls under Rule 100 of the Commission’s Rules of Procedure, which allows it to call for provisional measures to prevent irreparable harm before it has even decided whether a complaint is admissible.
Nothing on the public record shows that the Commission has granted them. The Coalition records that as an absence, not as a refusal. The Commission’s communications procedure is confidential until it decides, and a pending matter would not ordinarily appear anywhere.
What can be checked is what the Commission has published. Its 88th Ordinary Session, held in private in July 2026, adopted decisions on twenty-six communications. Its final communiqué of 31 July 2026 records five decisions on the merits, nine on admissibility and twelve matters struck out. It names no State, mentions no provisional measures, and does not refer to Equatorial Guinea. The Commission’s next public session opens on 12 October 2026.
On 12 August 2026 the same five organisations issued a statement which describes the request in the past tense and then calls on the Commission and other regional bodies “to urgently engage with the Government of Equatorial Guinea”. Two months after filing, the complainants were still asking.
The Commission did answer, in a case filed six months earlier
There is a comparison that gives the silence its weight.
In December 2025 the Global Strategic Litigation Council, the Transnational Disputes Clinic at Cornell Law School and a lawyer in Eswatini filed a complaint at the same Commission against the Kingdom of Eswatini, on behalf of three men sent there from the United States. On 4 March 2026 the Commission publicly announced that the complaint could proceed.
Global Strategic Litigation Council, 4 March 2026. “Today, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) publicly announced its decision to allow a complaint filed in December against the Kingdom of Eswatini to proceed. The suit challenges the unlawful and prolonged detention of so-called third country deportees from the United States. With this initial determination made, Eswatini will now be forced to respond to the ACHPR and justify its actions.”
Two of the three men, a Cuban national and a Yemeni national, had by then been held for nearly eight months. The third, a Jamaican national, had been returned to his own country. At least fifteen men with no connection to Eswatini had been transferred there since July 2025, and fourteen of them were held in the country’s maximum security prison. Eswatini is reported to have agreed to receive up to one hundred and sixty people in exchange for five point one million United States dollars.
The Eswatini complaint was the first of its kind. It shows that the Commission will say publicly when it takes a case up. That is what makes the absence of any similar announcement on Equatorial Guinea worth recording, and worth watching in October.
A second African court has been asked the same question
On 30 June 2026 a further action was filed, in a different forum. Lawyers in Ghana, the Cornell clinic and the Global Strategic Litigation Council brought a case against Ghana before the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States, on behalf of twenty-seven people, from at least sixty who had been flown there since September 2025.
The Global Strategic Litigation Council describes it as the first case ever brought under the Protocol on Free Movement of Persons of 1979. It pleads direct and indirect refoulement. It asks the court to halt further transfers, to order disclosure of the terms of the arrangement with the United States, to award damages and rehabilitation, and to bar Ghana from entering such arrangements in future. Medical evidence was prepared under the Istanbul Protocol. All twenty-seven have since left detention in Ghana.
Why the Commission is the only African forum open
This part is a matter of treaty records and can be stated plainly.
Equatorial Guinea is a State Party to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Its instrument was deposited on 18 August 1986. It is therefore subject to the Commission’s communications procedure, which is how these fourteen people reached it.
Equatorial Guinea signed the Protocol establishing the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights on 9 June 1998 and has never ratified it. The African Union’s status list records no ratification and no deposit. The African Court’s own list of thirty-four ratifying States does not include it. Nor has Equatorial Guinea made the declaration under Article 34(6) of that Protocol which allows individuals and non-governmental organisations to bring a case to the Court directly. The Court lists the States that have made it, and Equatorial Guinea is not among them.
The consequence is that the African Commission is the only African regional body these fourteen people can reach, and the Commission issues findings and recommendations rather than binding judgments.
The Commission has already addressed the practice in general terms
On 30 October 2025, at its 85th Ordinary Session, the Commission adopted a resolution on the externalisation of migration governance and the transfer of migrants to Africa from outside the continent. It names the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom. Two passages:
ACHPR/Res.645 (LXXXV) 2025. “African States must not conclude or maintain migration partnerships when they know, or ought reasonably to know, that such agreements entail a real risk of serious human rights violations”
ACHPR/Res.645 (LXXXV) 2025. The Commission condemns “any agreement with non-African States or entities or in any practices that leads to collective expulsions and forced transfers of migrants carried out without individual examination.”
The resolution calls on States to publish such agreements. The agreement between the United States and Equatorial Guinea, signed on 23 October 2025, has never been published.
Separately, on 13 May 2026, eight United Nations mandate holders and the Commission’s own Special Rapporteur on Refugees, Asylum Seekers, Internally Displaced Persons and Migrants in Africa issued a joint appeal calling on Equatorial Guinea “to immediately suspend any deportations of individuals at risk, ensure full respect for non-refoulement”. The complaint was filed three weeks later.
What is not established
No communication number is public. The African Charter articles invoked are not public. Whether the Commission has been seized of the matter is not public. Whether provisional measures have been sought from it a second time, or granted in any form, is not public. The text of the complaint has not been released. The Coalition has not seen it.
The Coalition does not report the names of the fourteen. It has not sought them.
Why this is recorded
The people moved under these arrangements are told, in effect, that the country they have arrived in is now responsible for them. The United States has said as much: a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security told Reuters this month that once a person is no longer in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency is no longer responsible for them.
If that is the position, then the question of who is responsible falls to the receiving State, and the forums that can be asked are African ones. Three have now been asked: the African Commission about Eswatini, the African Commission about Equatorial Guinea, and the ECOWAS Court about Ghana. What those bodies do with these cases will decide whether the arrangements are answerable anywhere at all.
Sources
- Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa, Pan African Lawyers Union, EG Justice, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta and Global Strategic Litigation Council, Human Rights Coalition Raises Alarm Over Medical Neglect and Potential Infectious Disease Risk in Equatorial Guinea refugee detention centre, 9 July 2026, which records the filing date of 5 June 2026.
- The same five organisations, Equatorial Guinea: Protect Deported Migrants and Lawyers Facing Threats and Intimidation, 12 August 2026.
- Global Strategic Litigation Council, African Union human rights commission gives green light for lawsuit against Eswatini, 4 March 2026.
- Global Strategic Litigation Council, Landmark lawsuit challenges Ghana, 30 June 2026.
- African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, ACHPR/Res.645 (LXXXV) 2025, Resolution on the Obligations of African States in the Context of the Externalization of Migration Governance and the Extra-Regional Transfer of Migrants to Africa, 30 October 2025.
- African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Final Communiqué of the 88th Ordinary Session, 31 July 2026.
- Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Experts urge Equatorial Guinea to uphold international obligations and halt deportations, 13 May 2026.
- African Union, status lists for the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and for the Protocol on the Establishment of an African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights; and the African Court’s own record of ratifications and Article 34(6) declarations.
The Coalition does not publish identifying numbers, detention file references or other identifiers belonging to people named in its reports, and does not publish the names of people whose proceedings are confidential. Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Ghana and Liberia carry an Alert on this site. If someone in your family was transferred under one of these arrangements, the route for finding a person and the legal aid index are on the Resources page. The Coalition records what courts, United Nations bodies, regional human rights bodies, government oversight agencies and identified news organisations have found, and identifies which of them made each finding. It does not advise on any individual case.