5. States Parties to the present Charter shall undertake to eliminate all forms of foreign exploitation particularly that practised by international monopoles so as to enable their peoples to fully benefit from the advantages derived from their national resources ." 196. The Court notes, in general terms, that the Charter does not define the notion of "peoples". In this regard, the point has been made that the drafters of the Charter deliberately omitted to define the notion in order to "permit a certain flexibility in the application and subsequent interpretation by future users of the legal instrument, the task of fleshing out the Charter being left to the human rights protection bodies."60 197. It is generally accepted that, in the context of the struggle against foreign domination in all its forms, the Charter primarily targets the peoples comprising the populations of the countries struggling to attain independence and national sovereignty61 . 198. In the circumstances, the question is whether the notion "people" used by the Charter covers not only the population as the constituent elements of the State, but also the ethnic groups or communities identified as forming part of the said population within a constituted State. In other words , the question that arises is whether the enjoyment of the rights unquestionably recognised for the constituent peoples of the population of a given State can be extended to include sub-state ethnic groups and communities that are part of that population. 199. In the view of the Court, the answer to this question is in the affirmative, provided such groups or communities do not call into question the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the State without the latter's consent. It would in fact be difficult to understand that the States which are the authors of the Charter intended , for example, to automatically recognise for the ethnic groups and communities that constitute their population, the right to self-determination and independence guaranteed under Article 60 Report of the Rapporteur pages 4 to5, paragraph 13, cited in Ouguergouz Fatsah, The African Charter of Human and Peoples' Rights. A Comprehensive Agenda for Human Dignity and Sustainable Democracy in Africa, (2003), page 205, Note 682. 61 See paragraphs 3 and 8 of the preamble to the Charter. I /_!; 60

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