Commission Béninoise des Droits de l'Homme (CBDH)

Origin and Mandate

Staffing and Appointment Procedures

Activities

Funding

Assessment

The CBDH's staffing and appointment procedures are by far the most diverse and independent of all the commissions in Africa. The members are selected entirely by the professional and NGO communities, without direct government involvement. Of the forty-five members, three are members "by right" with one representative from the magistrates, one representative from the bar association, and one representative from the association of physicians. They are elected and put forward by the professional bodies they represent. The other forty-two members, termed "mixed members," comprise fourteen NGO representatives, and twenty-eight who serve in their individual capacities these latter twenty-eight are elected by the other members of the commission upon "the nomination of the Executive Board after examination of individual files by the office." (Article 3 of the internal regulations).

The forty-two "mixed members" are eligible to serve for a renewable six-year term, but neither the CBDH law nor the commission's internal regulations specify for how long the threemembers "by right" may serve.35 The number of members is open to modification by the CBDH's general assembly, at the behest of the executive board, but this had never been invoked.
It is the individual members, rather than those present "by right" or as designated NGO members, who appear to play the most significant role on the commission. They include Saidou Agbantou, commission's president, Me Agnes Campbell, the vice-president, and Dominique Adjahouinou, the secretary general. The two members of the executive board who represent NGOs are Felix Dossa, the assistant secretary for information, who represents the Benin Red Cross, and Bachir Bakary, counselor, who represents the Islamic Youth Organization. None of the three legal members sits on the Executive Board of the commission.

The commission has enjoyed remarkable stability in its membership and the same leadership through its ten years of existence. Saidou Agbantou, a lawyer, has been reelected twice since he became president in 1990: his current three-year term is due to expire in July 2000.