The text of the ACHPR was the outcome of a drafting process that produced three primary drafts: The M’baye draft, which was presented as a working paper to the 1979 Dakar Meeting of Experts (M’baye draft); the draft produced by the 1979 Dakar Meeting of Experts (Dakar draft); and the draft as finalised after the June 1980 Banjul Ministerial Meeting, which reviewed the Preamble and the first eleven articles, and the January 1981 Banjul Ministerial Meeting, which reviewed the remaining articles and resolved the few outstanding points (Banjul draft). Although these were the primary drafts, in its English language form at least, a further four drafts, seven drafts in total, were produced: The M’baye draft, OAU CAB/LEG/67/3 and Rev. to Rev.5. The text adopted by the 1981 Nairobi AHSG was Rev.5. Over the years, the text has also been published by the OAU in various pamphlets but, unfortunately, they are not always reliable as, in comparison with Rev. and as between the pamphlets themselves, there are often textual and stylistic discrepancies, mainly minor but sometimes more material.

The non-primary drafts, with the possible exception of the initial OAU CAB/ LEG/67/3, seem to have been drawn up under the supervision of the OAU General Secretariat in the intervening period between the drafting and review meetings and indeed even after the Banjul draft had been finalised by the January 1981 Banjul Ministerial Meeting. They were not intended, it may be assumed, to alter the sense of an agreed text but only to clarify the intention or, more usually, to improve the translation and style of the agreed text. Nonetheless, in some cases, amendments were so extensive as to modify inescapably the meaning of the text – although in mitigation, the initial text frequently left much to be desired or just missed out the changes that had been agreed and therefore extensive editing was most appropriate. In other cases, though, the amendments amounted to little more than, say, altering ‘person’ to ‘individual’. Yet, despite these attempts to refine and improve the style of the drafts, in their English language form, they remain, in too many places, clumsy, convoluted, inconsistent and lacking in clarity with commas often appearing in strange places.