I. Southern African Development Community (SADC)
On May 20, 2011, at the Extraordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government of SADC, Member States decided not to reappoint or replace members of the Tribunal whose terms of office had expired or were about to expire. Furthermore, the Summit mandated the Ministers of Justice/Attorneys General to initiate the process aimed at amending the relevant SADC legal instruments and reiterated the moratorium on the Tribunal receiving new cases until the review of the SADC Protocol on the Tribunal. The Summit effectively suspended the Tribunal until August of the following year. The decision of the Summit goes against the recommendations of an independent study into the Tribunal that SADC had commissioned and against the recommendations of the Committee of Ministers of Justice and Attorneys General on the review of the Role, Responsibilities and Terms of Reference of the SADC Tribunal. The former Tribunal judges, including former president of the Tribunal, Chief Justice Ariranga Pillay, denounced the summit's decision as illegal and an affront to the rule of law.
