Thirty people have been transferred here from the United States since July 2025 and held at a high security prison without charge. This page sets out what is known about the arrangement, and what exists in the country for a person who arrives under it.
These are statements about the public record, not about the country. "Investigating" means the Coalition has not located a report or a decision on that point and is still looking. It is not a finding that the thing did not happen.
Basis: findings of torture and arbitrary detention by a United Nations body, and the government’s own admissions to the Committee against Torture.
The Working Group found the detention of Mduduzi Bacede Mabuza and Mthandeni Dube “arbitrary,” falling within categories I, II, III and V, and called for their immediate release and compensation. It held that “the denial of medical care can constitute a form of torture and cruel and inhuman treatment.”
In its first report to the Committee against Torture, submitted twenty years after it fell due, the Government stated that “there is no law criminalising torture in Eswatini,” and conceded that “the elements of the Common Law crimes do not align with the standards and elements set by the substantive definition provided in the Convention.”
The Government further stated that it “has not yet established an independent body to investigate cases of complaints of ill-treatment by law enforcement officials.” Complaints against the Royal Eswatini Police Service are investigated by a unit of that service; complaints against His Majesty’s Correctional Services through correctional structures.
Eswatini is not a party to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. It has no national preventive mechanism and has never been visited by the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture. Matsapha Correctional Complex, where people transferred from the United States are held, is subject to no international inspection.
Thirty people have been transferred from the United States to Eswatini across four operations. Twenty-eight remain at Matsapha. None has been charged with an offence in Eswatini. Acting Government Spokesperson Thabile Mdluli described them as in transit pending repatriation; fourteen months after the first flight, two have left.
The Coalition’s position. This state agreed to receive people who are not its nationals, moved against their will, under a programme United States federal courts have found punitive and whose purpose was stated publicly before the agreement was made. On the Coalition’s position it has knowingly facilitated that programme, and the wrong is complete at the moment of agreement. Nothing on this page is offered as mitigation. What a receiving state agrees to.
The United States and Eswatini signed a memorandum of understanding on May 14, 2025. Under it the United States agreed to provide approximately $5.1 million toward Eswatini’s migration management capacity, Eswatini agreed to accept up to 160 transferred people, both governments acknowledged obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention, its 1967 Protocol and the Convention against Torture, and the International Organization for Migration was designated to facilitate onward relocation within one year of a person’s arrival. Human Rights Watch made the document public in September 2025, and the government of Eswatini confirmed the payment in November 2025.
Thirty people had been transferred as of July 2026, on four flights: five on July 15, 2025, ten on October 6, 2025, four on March 11, 2026, and eleven on July 8, 2026. The nationalities reported across those flights include Angola, Belize, Cambodia, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Jamaica, Kenya, Laos, Mauritania, the Philippines, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Vietnam and Yemen. Several of those transferred held grants of protection from United States immigration judges against return to their own countries.
All of them were held at Matsapha Correctional Complex, a high security prison outside Mbabane, without charge. One Jamaican national and one Cambodian national have been repatriated to their own countries. One Cuban detainee held a hunger strike of about a month over indefinite confinement and the refusal of legal access.
On the law, the position moved once and moved narrowly. The High Court dismissed a challenge brought by the Eswatini Litigation Centre in February 2026 on the ground that the Centre lacked standing. On April 9, 2026 a three judge panel of Eswatini’s Supreme Court dismissed the government’s appeal against an order permitting the human rights lawyer Sibusiso Nhlabatsi to visit the first group of five men, observing that “there can be no real harm in granting the respondent access to the detainees.” Amnesty International welcomed the ruling and called it insufficient: in the words of its deputy regional director for East and Southern Africa, Vongai Chikwanda, “Access to legal counsel is essential, but it cannot by itself redress the continuing arbitrary detention.” Three of the men have since filed a complaint with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
The United States and Eswatini signed a memorandum on 14 May 2025. Its text has never been published. According to reporting and to Amnesty International, it is a non-binding instrument providing for up to 160 people, a one-year renewable “transit framework”, engagement with the International Organization for Migration on onward relocation, and $5.1 million for border and migration management capacity. It is reported to disclaim the creation of any legal rights or obligations under Eswatini law, United States law or international law.
The United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee minority confirmed the payment in February 2026, listing Eswatini among five states paid to accept third-country nationals. On 18 November 2025 Eswatini’s finance minister confirmed that the $5.1 million had gone into the National Disaster Management Agency’s account, but that the agency was not permitted to use it because it had not been allocated to it, and that the payment still needed to be regularised.
Thirty people have been transferred across four operations: 16 July 2025, 6 October 2025, 11 March 2026 and 8 July 2026. Two have left: Orville Etoria was repatriated to Jamaica in September 2025, and Pheap Rom to Cambodia. Twenty-eight remain at Matsapha Correctional Complex. None has been charged with an offence in Eswatini. Counsel’s central point is that the men are held without the committal warrants that Eswatini’s own Correctional Services Act requires. Roberto Mosquera del Peral held a thirty-day hunger strike from 15 October 2025 and has developed glaucoma with significant loss of vision.
Most of what is known about torture in Eswatini comes from reports of what others have alleged. One document is different. On 28 August 2025 the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention adopted an opinion on the detention of the opposition members of parliament Mduduzi Bacede Mabuza and Mthandeni Dube. It found the detention arbitrary under categories I, II, III and V, and called for their immediate release and an enforceable right to compensation.
In its own reasoning, not in recounting the complaint, the Working Group held that “the denial of medical care can constitute a form of torture and cruel and inhuman treatment.” It also found that a period of solitary confinement exceeding fifteen days “would nonetheless be considered prolonged solitary confinement… and, as such, be prohibited under rules 43 and 44 of the Nelson Mandela Rules.”
Mthandeni Dube was pardoned on 5 November 2025 and conditionally released, under restrictions on his speech, movement and political activity. Mabuza remains imprisoned. Amnesty International considers him a prisoner of conscience.
One part of the opinion cuts the other way and belongs here. On the evidence before it, the Working Group declined to find a lack of judicial independence.
The United States Department of State has recorded “numerous credible reports” that Eswatini’s security forces used torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in each of its reports for 2022, 2023 and 2024. In 2023 it elevated torture into the executive summary’s list of significant human rights issues, where the 2022 edition had listed only cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and had not used the word torture at all. In the same 2023 edition it wrote that “Impunity was entrenched in the security forces”, where a year earlier it had described impunity as “a problem” attributable more to lack of training than to politicisation.
The specific episodes it records are allegations reported to it, not findings of its own, and are set out that way here. In 2022 it reported that Umbutfo Eswatini Defence Force personnel beat and kicked the student union president Colani Maseku, causing injuries requiring hospitalisation, and that media and political activists reported prison officials subjecting Mabuza and Dube to beatings; both men required medical treatment after an unannounced search of their cells on 23 September. In 2023 it reported that defence attorneys asserted police tortured Thabo Kunene during an interrogation, and that defence attorneys recorded to the Attorney General that Mabuza had been “assaulted by prison wardens and new recruits, stripped naked, humiliated in front of wardresses, kicked in the face, beaten, gouged in the eye, and stabbed with blunt objects.” In 2024 it reported Mabuza’s sworn affidavit that officials recruited fifteen inmates to beat him after he told them he feared being killed.
Amnesty International has reported that police abducted and electrocuted the student leader Sakhile Nxumalo; that more than forty officers stripped and beat two PUDEMO members; that soldiers of the Umbutfo Eswatini Defence Force abducted, tortured and abandoned Brian Sihlongonyane in a forest after he delivered a petition to the United Nations; and that guards at Matsapha denied Mabuza food he required for hypertension for at least four days.
In September 2025 Eswatini filed its first report to the United Nations Committee against Torture, twenty years and four months after it fell due. The admissions in it are the strongest evidence on this page, because they are the government’s own.
It states that “there is no law criminalising torture in Eswatini”, that torture is prosecuted instead as common assault or assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, and, expressly, that “It is conceded that the elements of the Common Law crimes do not align with the standards and elements set by the substantive definition provided in the Convention.” It states that Eswatini “has not yet established an independent body to investigate cases of complaints of ill-treatment by law enforcement officials”, and that the statutory Police Service and Correctional Service Commissions “have not yet been established.”
It also reports numbers. Complaints to the Royal Eswatini Police Service’s Complaints and Discipline Unit involving acts or omissions “having elements of torture by the police” ran as follows:
| 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 15 | 10 | 8 | 3 | 9 | 49 |
Most, the government says, “involved assaults and mistreatment of members of the public by police officers during arrests and interrogations.” Separately it reports civil claims against police officials under the combined heading “Assault and Torture”: 29 in 2019, 38 in 2020, 28 in 2021, 68 in 2022 and 30 in 2023: 193 in five years.
Those 193 are claims lodged, not findings made, and the category combines assault with torture. No outcome is reported for any of them. The figure should not be read as 193 proven acts of torture, and is not presented as one here.
No statutory offence of torture conforming to the Convention. No independent body to investigate complaints against law enforcement. Complaints against the police are investigated by a unit of the police; complaints against His Majesty’s Correctional Services through correctional structures; complaints against the military through military justice.
Eswatini is also not a party to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. It has no national preventive mechanism, and it has never been visited by the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, which has no right of access to a state that has not joined. Matsapha Correctional Complex, where the men transferred from the United States are held, is therefore subject to no international inspection at all.
As of today the Committee against Torture has taken no step on Eswatini’s report: no list of issues, no summary record, no concluding observations, and Eswatini does not appear on the schedule for the Committee’s November 2026 session.
Four things belong on the other side of the ledger.
The complaint figures above peaked in 2020 and 2021, during the civil unrest, and the most recent years are lower than that peak. Any argument that the position is worsening has to reckon with the government’s own series, which is why the full series is printed here rather than the last three years.
In July 2025 the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights conducted a promotion mission to Eswatini which expressly included prevention of torture and which visited Matsapha. Among its positive observations it commended “Efforts being made against impunity, by ensuring accountability through prosecution of security officials (police officials) who commit crimes, including assault, torture and extra judicial killings”. The Commission records the effort; it publishes no outcome data. In the same statement it recommended that the government “Enhance existing measures to prevent excessive use of force by the Police Force”.
Eswatini did engage with the treaty body. It filed the report, late as it was, and its constitution prohibits torture.
And Dube was pardoned and released, which is a real change from the position the Working Group examined.
The record establishes torture and serious ill-treatment by Eswatini’s police, soldiers and correctional officers, over several years, documented by the United States government, by Amnesty International, and, as to arbitrary detention and the denial of medical care, by a United Nations body. It establishes, from the government’s own submission, that Eswatini has no conforming torture offence and no independent investigator, and from the treaty record that it is outside the international inspection system entirely.
It does not establish that any of the people transferred from the United States has been tortured at Matsapha. What is documented as to them is prolonged detention without charge, the absence of the committal warrants Eswatini’s own law requires, obstruction of confidential access to lawyers, and untreated serious illness. Nor does it establish that anyone transferred to Eswatini has been sent onward: no such removal has been documented, which is why Eswatini carries a designation for torture and not for refoulement.
On 9 April 2026 the Supreme Court of Eswatini upheld an order granting a lawyer access to the men, the panel observing that “there can be no real harm in granting the respondent access to the detainees”. Access had been granted by the High Court in October 2025 and stayed on appeal, so roughly nine months passed without in-person legal contact.
A constitutional challenge, arguing that section 238 of the Constitution required the agreement to be ratified by Parliament, was dismissed on 3 February 2026 for lack of standing. The court also faulted the applicants for not producing the agreement, which was the substance of their complaint. A notice of appeal was filed on 13 March 2026 and has not been decided.
On 4 March 2026 the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights announced that a complaint filed against Eswatini in December 2025, brought on behalf of three of the men, may proceed. It is a complaint, not a finding.
Two silences are worth recording alongside the proceedings. No United Nations special procedure communication, to Eswatini or to the United States, concerns these transfers. And in the same period the United States replied to none of the special procedure communications it received.
A complaint was filed against the Kingdom of Eswatini in December 2025. On 10 March 2026 the Global Strategic Litigation Council announced that the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights had publicly announced its decision to allow it to proceed.
It was brought by the Global Strategic Litigation Council, the Transnational Disputes Clinic at Cornell Law School, and attorney Alma David of Novo Legal Group, on behalf of three of at least fifteen men transferred to Eswatini since July 2025. The three are described as citizens of Cuba and Yemen, with a Jamaican complainant since repatriated.
This is a different coalition from the one that later filed against Equatorial Guinea, and the two cases should not be run together.
Global Strategic Litigation Council, 10 March 2026. The Coalition has not seen the complaint itself and does not state which articles of the African Charter are pleaded.
This part of the record comes from habeas proceedings in the Western District of Washington, brought by men who faced removal to a third country and argued that removal paired with imprisonment is a punishment the Constitution does not allow without a criminal trial.
In August 2025 a federal judge examined sworn declarations that men deported from the United States to South Sudan and to Eswatini had been imprisoned incommunicado since their arrival. In November 2025 a second judge, ruling on the merits, described the same evidence and recorded that in Eswatini the men were held in solitary confinement.
“This case, like Nguyen, involves a pre-1995 Vietnamese immigrant who reasonably fears third-country deportation under the current Government policy to places that include South Sudan and Eswatini, where other pre-1995 Vietnamese immigrants have been deported and are reportedly being held incommunicado (and, in Eswatini, in solitary confinement).”
On that record the court held that the government’s practice of third-country removal paired with imprisonment “is intended to be punitive” and violates due process, and ordered that the man before it not be removed to any third country where he was likely to be imprisoned on arrival. Four further courts have since reached the same conclusion.
Two limits on what this establishes. The declarations are evidence a court accepted in order to grant relief, not findings made after a trial about conditions inside Eswatini. And “reportedly” is the court’s own word, not a softening added here. What the decisions do establish is that United States judges, shown what is said to happen to men sent to Eswatini, have treated it as serious enough to stop further removals there.
Abubaka v. Bondi, No. 2:25-cv-01889-RSL (W.D. Wash.), order granting habeas petition, 17 November 2025, quoting and applying Nguyen v. Scott, 796 F. Supp. 3d 703 (W.D. Wash. 21 August 2025). Recorded in the register at Abubaka v. Bondi.
Do you want to return to your country of origin?
Not everyone transferred to a third country is afraid of going home. Many never applied for withholding of removal or protection under the Convention against Torture, and do not hold either. Others hold a finding by a United States immigration judge that they would be persecuted or tortured if returned. The two situations lead to entirely different sets of bodies, and the answer belongs to you. Both are set out below, in the same detail.
Two routes exist and they are separate.
Consular. Your own government’s mission can normally issue or replace travel documents and confirm identity. Eswatini hosts very few resident missions, so for most nationalities the accredited embassy or high commission sits in Pretoria, South Africa, or in Maputo, Mozambique, and is reached from there. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of your own country will confirm which post covers Eswatini.
The Organization for Migration. The memorandum of understanding names the International Organization for Migration as the body designated to facilitate onward relocation within one year of arrival, and IOM has an office in Mbabane. What IOM will and will not do in any individual case is a question for IOM, and asking it costs nothing.
Two people transferred under this arrangement, one Jamaican national and one Cambodian national, have been repatriated to their own countries.
A grant of withholding of removal or of protection under the Convention against Torture is a finding by a United States immigration judge that you would be persecuted or tortured if returned to a named country. It is a document, it has a date and a file number, and it exists in the record of the United States immigration court whether or not you are holding a copy.
The bodies that deal with a fear of return are not the same as the ones that arrange travel. In Eswatini they are the lawyer, the Commission on Human Rights and Public Administration, and, outside the country, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, to which three of the men transferred here have already applied. Their contact details are below.
Eswatini has no resident office of the United Nations refugee agency. UNHCR covers the country from South Africa and works through World Vision Eswatini on the ground.
What exists, in the order in which it usually matters
The Baphalali Eswatini Red Cross Society is part of the Restoring Family Links network, which exists to reconnect people separated by detention, conflict and migration, and to carry messages between them. Its contact details are below. A family that does not know which country you are in cannot help you and cannot instruct a lawyer for you.
Eswatini’s Supreme Court held on April 9, 2026 that the men transferred here are entitled to visits from a lawyer. That ruling is public and it can be named. The Eswatini Litigation Centre and the Southern Africa Litigation Centre have both worked on these cases; the human rights lawyer named in the Supreme Court proceedings is Sibusiso Nhlabatsi.
The Commission on Human Rights and Public Administration is Eswatini’s national human rights institution. It investigates alleged violations of the fundamental rights protected by the Constitution and complaints of injustice and abuse of power by public officers. Complaints are made in writing to the Commissioner’s office. A complaint is a record with a date on it, and a record with a date is the beginning of everything that follows.
Only three resident missions are recorded in Eswatini: the High Commission of Mozambique, the High Commission of South Africa, and the Embassy of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Most other states accredit a non resident mission from Pretoria, and a further group from Maputo. For most nationalities, consular contact therefore runs through another country, which takes longer and needs to be asked for earlier.
SIM card registration is compulsory in Eswatini and free of charge. Under the Electronic Communications (Subscriber Registration) Regulations of 2016, a person who is not a citizen or permanent resident must give a full name and surname, an identity number, at least one address in Eswatini, and the country in which the passport was issued. An unregistered SIM card is deactivated. This is why identity documents come before a telephone in this list, and why a person released without documents often cannot make the calls that would fix everything else.
The memorandum sets a capacity of 160 people, a payment of approximately $5.1 million, and a role for the International Organization for Migration in onward relocation within one year of arrival. Those terms are public. What has been applied to any individual is not, and asking about it is a reasonable question to put to IOM, to a lawyer, and to the Commission.
Legal representation and litigation
Public interest litigation
Brought the February 2026 High Court challenge to the detention of the transferred men, which was dismissed on standing. Works with the Southern Africa Litigation Centre. Sibusiso Nhlabatsi is the human rights lawyer named in the Supreme Court proceedings on legal access.
Checked September 5, 2026 · CIVICUS Lens interview, May 22, 2026
Regional litigation support
Regional organization based in Johannesburg. Works in Eswatini on judicial independence, freedom of expression and international justice, including cases arising from the deportation arrangement, with the Eswatini Litigation Centre as partner.
Checked September 5, 2026 · southernafricalitigationcentre.org
Official complaint bodies
National human rights institution
Investigates alleged violations of constitutional rights and complaints of injustice, corruption and abuse of power by public officers. Complaints are submitted in writing to the Commissioner's office.
Checked September 5, 2026 · Government of Eswatini
Regional complaint mechanism
Eswatini ratified the African Charter on September 15, 1995 and deposited on October 9, 1995. Three of the men transferred to Eswatini have filed a complaint with the Commission alleging unlawful indefinite detention and denial of legal counsel.
Checked September 5, 2026 · achpr.au.int and African Union ratification list
United Nations presence
Named in the memorandum of understanding
Designated in the United States and Eswatini memorandum as the body to facilitate onward relocation within one year of arrival. Operates under the IOM Regional Office for Southern Africa in Pretoria.
Checked September 5, 2026 · United Nations in Eswatini
Refugee agency, non resident
UNHCR has no office in Eswatini. The country is covered by UNHCR in South Africa, which names World Vision Eswatini as the contact in country for refugee integration, social services and livelihood support.
Checked September 5, 2026 · UNHCR Help, South Africa
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
A Senior Human Rights Adviser has been posted in Mbabane since 2021, within the office of the UN Resident Coordinator rather than as a separate OHCHR office. Eswatini is covered by the OHCHR Regional Office for Southern Africa. OHCHR publishes no direct telephone number for the post, and it is reached through the UN Resident Coordinator's office at UN House.
Checked September 5, 2026 · OHCHR
Contacting family
Restoring Family Links
Part of the international Restoring Family Links network, which traces relatives separated by detention, conflict and migration and carries messages between them.
Checked September 5, 2026 · ICRC Restoring Family Links directory
This is the least satisfying answer in the project, and the Coalition would rather give it than a hopeful one.
Eswatini signed the Protocol establishing the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights on 7 December 2004 and never ratified it. The Court therefore has no jurisdiction over Eswatini by any route, not even through a referral by the African Commission. The declaration under article 34(6) that opens the Court to individuals is not available to a state that is not a party in the first place.
Eswatini is a member of the Southern African Development Community. Under article 15 of the 2000 Protocol on the Tribunal, that Tribunal had jurisdiction “over disputes between States, and between natural or legal persons and States”, subject to exhaustion of local remedies. It was a real forum and individuals used it.
It was dismantled in stages. In August 2010 the Summit imposed a moratorium on the Tribunal receiving new cases. In May 2011 it reaffirmed the moratorium and resolved not to reappoint members whose terms had expired, which is what made the Tribunal unable to sit. In August 2012 it resolved that a new Tribunal be negotiated with a mandate confined to disputes between member states.
The replacement, the Protocol on the Tribunal in the SADC signed at Victoria Falls on 18 August 2014, gives jurisdiction over interpretation of the Treaty and Protocols in disputes between member states, and makes no mention of natural or legal persons anywhere in its text. It needs ratification by two thirds of members and is not in force. Eswatini did not sign it. There is no functioning SADC Tribunal today: no judges, no sittings, no judgments. Do not confuse it with the SADC Administrative Tribunal, which is an internal staff body and hears nothing of this kind.
Two challenges were made and neither reopened the door. South Africa’s Constitutional Court held on 11 December 2018 that its own President’s participation in the suspension and his signature of the 2014 Protocol were unconstitutional, unlawful and irrational, and directed him to withdraw the signature. That binds South Africa’s executive and gives a person detained in Eswatini nothing. And the African Commission, in a communication in which Swaziland was itself the eleventh respondent, declared the complaint admissible and then found no violation of articles 7 or 26 of the African Charter in the closure of the Tribunal. The Commission held there is no Charter obligation to provide access to it.
Eswatini is a member of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, whose Court of Justice sits at Lusaka with eleven judges across two divisions and is issuing judgments. One of its first instance judges, Justice Mazwendoda Mavuso, is from Eswatini.
Article 26 of the COMESA Treaty allows any person resident in a member state to refer to the Court the legality of an act, regulation, directive or decision of a member state on the ground that it is unlawful or an infringement of the Treaty. There is no nationality condition. The Coalition looked for a time limit and found none: article 26 sets no limitation period, the whole Treaty contains none that applies, and rule 109 of the 2025 Rules of Procedure refers to a period for commencing proceedings against a member state without ever stating its length. And article 6(e) of the Treaty binds members to the “recognition, promotion and protection of human and peoples’ rights in accordance with the provisions” of the African Charter.
So the argument is available: that detaining a person in these circumstances infringes the Treaty a member state has bound itself to. Three things stand in its way, and the Coalition will not dress them up.
First, article 26 requires local remedies to be exhausted in the national courts before a member state’s act can be challenged, in terms: unless the person “has first exhausted local remedies in the national courts or tribunals”. That is the opposite of the ECOWAS position and it is a hard condition for someone held without a lawyer.
Second, article 6 is a statement of principles that members agree to adhere to, not a head of jurisdiction. No article of the Treaty gives the Court human rights jurisdiction. The claim would have to be pleaded as an infringement of the Treaty, and the Court has held it has no jurisdiction over claims grounded solely on a breach of national law.
Third, and most bluntly, it has never been done. The Coalition read the Court’s whole published output, about forty-five decisions since 2000, and found nothing about detention, deportation, expulsion, arrest, immigration or refugees. Everything is trade, customs, contract, banking or staff disputes. The Court itself records low case intake, non-operational sub-registries and no legal aid scheme.
The honest summary is that this is untested rather than open. It is a real court with real judges that has never been asked this question. Someone will have to be first, and being first is slow and uncertain, which is no use at all to a person who needs to be out of a cell this month. It is set out here because a lawyer taking this on should know the provision exists, and because the alternative was to write that Eswatini has nothing, which would not have been true.
Protocol on the Establishment of an African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, article 34(6); African Union depositary list, status date 14 February 2023. Protocol on the Tribunal in the Southern African Development Community, Windhoek, 7 August 2000, article 15. Protocol on the Tribunal in the SADC, Victoria Falls, 18 August 2014, articles 33 and 53, and its signature page, on which Eswatini does not appear. Law Society of South Africa and Others v President of the Republic of South Africa and Others [2018] ZACC 51, 11 December 2018. Luke Munyandu Tembani and Benjamin John Freeth v Angola and Thirteen Others, Communication 409/12, African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 54th Ordinary Session, at paragraphs 114 and 145 to 146. Treaty establishing the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, Kampala, 5 November 1993, articles 6(e), 26, 29, 30 and 34; COMESA Court of Justice Rules of Procedure 2025, rule 109; COMESA Court of Justice Strategic Plan 2026 to 2030. Checked 8 September 2026. The Coalition is reading these provisions, not advising on them, and a lawyer admitted in the region should settle how a particular case is framed.
Eswatini's position under the treaties, and what follows from it
Amnesty International issued an urgent action on July 16, 2026, one year after the first flight. It calls on the authorities of Eswatini to end the arrangement, to disclose publicly who has been transferred and on what basis each person is held, to ensure prompt judicial review of the lawfulness of the detention, to grant access to legal representation, family, consular officials, medical care and independent monitors, and to prevent onward transfers to countries where the people held would face serious human rights risks. Amnesty names two addressees: the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, P.O. Box 924, Mbabane, and the Permanent Representative of Eswatini to the United Nations, 408 East 50th Street, New York, New York 10022. The action runs to January 20, 2027.
This matters to a reader of this page for a practical reason. A request that has already been made publicly by a named international organization is a request that can be repeated by a lawyer, by a family member, or by the person concerned, without having to be invented.