African state and has structures at the at the sub-regional, regional or continental
level, or undertakes activities beyond the territory of the state within which it is
registered as well as organisations in the diaspora recognised by the African Union
(Request for advisory opinion by the Socio-Economic Rights Accountability Project
(SERAP), 001/2013, advisory opinion, 26 May 2017, para 48). However, recognition
of an NGO by the African Commission through the grant of observer status does not
suffice as an organisation recognised by the African Union for the purposes of giving
standing to an NGO to make a request for advisory opinion in terms of article 4 of the
Court’s Protocol. If the drafters of the Protocol had intended this to be the case they
would have expressly specified that these include NGOs with observer status before
the African Commission as they do in article 5 of the Court’s Protocol with regards to
standing in contentious cases (Request for advisory opinion by the Socio-Economic
Rights Accountability Project (SERAP), 001/2013, advisory opinion, 26 May 2017,
paras 53 & 54). Consequently, only NGOs with a memorandum of understanding
with the African Union or recognised by the African Union itself and not its organs
such as the African Commission, have standing to bring requests for advisory opinion
given that that African Union has its own procedures of recognition of NGOs through
observer status granted by the Executive Council of the African Union (Request for
advisory opinion by the Socio-Economic Rights Accountability Project (SERAP),
001/2013, advisory opinion, 26 May 2017, paras 55, 59, 60, 61 & 62)