12
considered as unreasonable or illegitimate limitations to the exercise of
the rights enshrined in the said provisions (sec, on a similar matter, the
findings of the lnter-Amcrican Court of Human Rights in Paragraphs 193
and 205 of its judgment of 6 August 2008 in the case Castaneda Gutman
v. Mexico).
29. Unlike Articles 22 and 25 of the International Covenant on the Civil and
Political Rights, Articles I 0 and 13 ( l) of the African Charter do not
provide in a satisfactorily manner for the freedom of association and the
right of the citizen to freely participate in the government of his or her
country.
30. The main weakness of these two provisions of the Charter lies in the
claw-back clause they contain.
Both articles indeed provide that the
freedom of association and the right of the citizen to freely participate in
the public life of his or her country must be exercised " in confonnity with
the rules laid down by law". That clause does not appear in Article 25 of
the Second Covenant which, for its part, provides that the guaranteed
rights should be exercised "without discrimination and unreasonable
restrictions". This provision consequently a11ows for "reasonable"
restrictions, such as those based on the age of the person for instance. It is
our view that Articles I 0 and 13 (1) of the Charter should be interpreted
in the same spirit. The limitations that the lawmaker could provide to the
exercise of those guranteed rights must be reasonable or legitimate, that is
they would need to comply with a number of objective criteria. Since
Articles 10 and 13 (1) are silent, one could usefully refer to the criteria set
out in the second Paragraph of Article 27 of the Charter even though this
provision is a priori intended to prevent the abuse that the individual
might likely commit in the exercise of his or her rights and freedoms