Justice Mukete is a Senior Judicial and Legal Officer in Cameroon with over 25 years of experience as a Practicing Judge.
Academically, he earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Law (LLB) with Honors from the University of Yaounde, Cameroon in the year 1989, and a Post-Graduate Diploma (Maitrise) in Law from the same University in 1990. In that same year, Judge Mukete entered the National School of Administration and Magistracy (ENAM) in Yaounde, Cameroon, where he graduated in 1992 with a Higher Diploma in Magistracy. He also received relevant advanced training, and has attended many practical certified international courses in development, gender, the rule of law, climate change, human rights, governance, migration and leadership at the UN Human Rights Centre in Geneva, Switzerland, the International Institute of Human Rights (IIHR) in Strasbourg, France, the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of the Erasmus University of Rotterdam at Hague, the Netherlands, the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) in Rome, Italy, the International Centre for Human Rights Education (EQUITAS) in Montreal, Canada, the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) at the University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, and the International Institute of Humanitarian Law (IIHL) in Sanremo, Italy, amongst others. Recently, in the year 2022, he received PhD in International Law from Selinus University, Italy.
He co-founded the Global Network for Good Governance (GNGG) in the year 2000 in Limbe, South West of Cameroon, and since then has given the organization strategic direction in holding corporate entities liable, especially multi-nationals, for land grabs and other environmental abuses in communities. Under his stewardship, the organization has engaged in publications, projects and programs, as well as research in the areas of corporate governance, participatory development, poverty alleviation, and local leadership, all aimed at the empowerment of grassroots change makers particularly women and youths.
GNGG is a member of the African Coalition for Corporate accountability (ACCA) based at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, with a mandate to advocate for business practices that have a human face in Africa.
He has written many articles and position papers on the rule of law, anti-corruption, human rights, democracy and governance.
From 2004-2007, Judge Mukete sat on the Cameroon government National Anti-Corruption Observatory (OLC) at the Prime Minister’s Office. He is a member of many international organizations amongst which are the World Jurist Association (WJA), Penal Reform International (PRI), Amnesty International (AI), International Correction and Prisons Association (ICPA), the Transformation Thinkers Network (TTN) and the International Development Lawyers Forum (IDLF). He is an Associate of the Council of a Community of Democracies (CCD), USA. One of the main highlights in the working career of Judge Mukete is the case against The Herakles Farms in Cameroon in which he handed down a landmark judgment in August 2011. It concerns the use of judicial decisions to control the quest by multinationals to grab huge parcels of lands from poor, indigenous communities without Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC). The Court Judgment stopped The Herakles Farms, a US Consortium, from acquiring 70,000 hectares of community land in Mundemba, Ndian Division of the South West Region in Cameroon to open and run a palm plantation at the detriment of the indigenous population spread within 19 villages in the forest. The Judgment was well received by international conservation organizations such as the Oakland Institute, Greenpeace, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the World Conservation Society, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Judge Mukete is also a Reader in global migration. He founded the Refugee Welfare Association Cameroon (REWAC) in March 2009. Based in Bamenda, North West of Cameroon, the organization works to promote, defend and enforce the rights of vulnerable migrants as enshrined in International Conventions, to which Cameroon is a signatory. The interesting linkage between climate change, environmental degradation and displacement in the light of asserting the rights of indigenous peoples tops his research agenda.
A full list of publications of Judge Mukete can be found in his attached resume. He is married and a father of three boys.
Full CV of Justice Mukete |
