Cultural Transformation and Human Rights in Africa
Cultural Transformation and Human Rights in Africa

Author: Abdullahi An-Na'im

Publisher: Zed Books

Published: 2002-07-01

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781842770917

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The authors of this volume seek to contribute to the clarification of the very difficult conceptual and practical questions surrounding the legitimization and permanent protection of human rights in non-Western cultural contexts, specifically in this case Africa. The contributors try to clarify thinking about what ought to constitute human rights in an African context as well as strategies for realizing them within communities and countries. These issues are particularly contentious when the specific point at issue is the promotion and protection of economic, social and cultural rights, and even more so in relation to the rights of women. The underlying premise is that there are possibilities for the local promotion of what ought to be universal human rights through processes of cultural transformation over time. While conceding the difficulties and constraints of the relationship between local cultures and the notion of the universality of human rights, the contributors believe that it is both necessary and possible to address these issues by making use of creative possibilities within specific countries. Several of the contributors explore these questions of cultural transformation and human rights generally. The African Charter of Human and People's Rights is examined to see if there is a case for recognizing a specifically African cultural contribution to conceptualizations of human rights which have been originally formulated in a European social context. The volume then proceeds to translate the general issues at stake into the particular question of women's rights - especially their ability to own, control and have access to land and other property rights. This thoughtful set of explorations by African scholars and human rights activists adds significantly to our understanding of the complex relationships that exist between culture, religion, law and human rights.

Communication, Culture, and Human Rights in Africa
Communication, Culture, and Human Rights in Africa

Author: Bala A. Musa

Publisher: University Press of America

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 0761853073

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"The western world can learn much from this investigation into the relationship between human rights and communication taken from studies in Africa."---Katy W. Hansen, Member, Board of Directors. United Nations Association-USA: past president, National Peace Coprs Association --

Human Rights in Africa
Human Rights in Africa

Author: ʻAbd Allāh Aḥmad Naʻīm

Publisher: Globe Pequot Publishing Group Incorporated/Bloomsbury

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13:

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" This powerful volume challenges the conventional view that the concept of human rights is peculiar to the West and, therefore, inherently alien to the non-Western traditions of third world countries. This book demonstrates that there is a contextual legitimacy for the concept of human rights. Virginia A. Leary and Jack Donnelly discuss the Western cultural origins of international human rights; David Little, Bassam Tibi, and Ann Elizabeth Mayer explore Christian and Islamic perspectives on human rights; Rhoda E. Howard, Claude E. Welch, Jr., and James C. N. Paul examine human rights in the context of the African nation-state; Kwasi Wiredu, James Silk, and Francis M. Deng offer African cultural perspectives; and Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im and Richard D. Schwartz discuss prospects for a cross-cultural approach to human rights. "

Human Rights
Human Rights

Author: Judith R. Blau

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 9780742542433

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There is growing recognition around the globe that people's fundamental human rights are being imperiled in a world economy that is being driven by multinationals, investors, and banks. The 'race to the bottom' and insatiable greed has intensified poverty and economic inequalities, fueled migration, and rapidly accelerated environmental degradation. The fates of all nations are interdependent and even though the U.S. is the prime driver of the new economy, Americans have likewise experienced declines over the past decades. Blau and Moncada outline the fundamental human rights that all people are entitled to and the important role that nations have in upholding these rights. Americans find it somewhat difficult to accept the basic premise of human rights because liberalism, as a social, political, and economic ethos powerfully undercuts the premise of human rights. American liberalism highlights the efficacy of individual achievement and individual autonomy, thereby promoting the idea that people have no rights to security. . Human rights, in contrast to the liberal ethos, asserts that all humans have inalienable rights, including rights to a job, housing, social security, education, and a cultural, racial or ethnic identity. Under the conditions of a turbulent global economy, human rights need to be granted the highest standing. The authors consider global capitalism, as well as the role of the global media, and the problematic relationship between the state and society in America. In the final chapter, we review the many currents of transformative movements that are promoting a more equitable, fairer, and more egalitarian world.

The Palgrave Handbook of African Women's Studies
The Palgrave Handbook of African Women's Studies

Author: Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 2021-10-29

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783030280987

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This definitive handbook is the first reference of its kind bringing together knowledge, scholarship, and debates on themes and issues concerning African women everywhere. It unearths, critiques, reviews, analyses, theorizes, synthesizes and evaluates African women’s historical, social, political, economic, local and global lives and experiences with a view to decolonizing the corpus. This Handbook questions the gendered roles and positions of African women and the structures, institutions, and processes of policy, politics, and knowledge production that continually construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct African women and the study of them. Contributors offer a consistent emphasis on debunking erroneous and misleading myths about African women's roles and positions, bringing their previously marginalized stories to relief, and ultimately re-writing their histories. Thus, this Handbook enlarges the scope of the field, challenges its orthodoxies, and engenders new subjects, theories, and approaches. This reference work includes, to the greatest extent possible, the voices of African women themselves as writers of their own stories. The detailed, rigorous and up-to-date analyses in the work represent a variety of theoretical, methodological, and transdisciplinary approaches. This reference work will prove vital in charting new directions for the study of African women, and will reverberate in future studies, generating new debates and engendering further interest.

Human Rights and Conflict Transformation in Africa
Human Rights and Conflict Transformation in Africa

Author: Laurence Juma

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 508

ISBN-13: 9956790419

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This study maps the interactions between human rights norms and values, on the one hand, and conflict resolution, post-conflict peace-building and reconstruction, on the other. It advances the view both from a theoretical and practical standpoint, that human rights have a role to play throughout the life of any conflict: from the pre-conflict to the post-conflict and reconstruction stages. Identifying entry points for human rights in the pre-conflict stage leading up to the establishment of the rule of law and societal reconstruction after the conflict, this book uses Sierra Leone and Democratic Republic of Congo experiences to illustrate the obstacles, the successes, and the significance of human rights norms to the overall peace agenda in societies afflicted by conflict.

Implementing Business and Human Rights Norms in Africa: Law and Policy Interventions
Implementing Business and Human Rights Norms in Africa: Law and Policy Interventions

Author: Oyeniyi Abe

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-05-15

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1000588211

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This book examines the contemporary and contentious question of the critical connections between business and human rights, and the implementation of socially responsible norms in developing countries, with particular reference to Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. Business enterprises and transnational corporate actors operate in a complex global environment, especially when operating in high risks sectors such as oil and gas, mining, construction, banking, and health care amongst others. Understanding human rights responsibilities, impacts, and socially responsible behaviour for companies is therefore an essential component of corporate risk management in our current world. The release of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, an instrument consisting of 31 principles on this issue, has further underscored the emergence of a rapidly developing set of international law norms on human rights responsibilities of businesses and transnational corporations. It has also shaped the discourse on corporate accountability for human rights. In addition to minimizing litigation, financial and reputational risks, understanding and demonstrating corporate respect for human rights is vital to building a culture of trust and integrity amongst local communities, investors, and shareholders. While Africa has been at the receiving end of deleterious activities of corporate actors, it has failed to address corporate impunity and human rights violations by non-state actors. Questions abound revolving around the underpinnings of a corporate responsibility to respect human rights, that is, how non-western and particularly African conceptions of respect may help develop a beyond do no net harm approach to respect; policy discourses on human rights due diligence, human rights impact assessment; mandating corporate respect for human rights in both domestic and international law. This book examines, clarifies, and unpacks the guiding principles of a rights-based approach to development and social inclusion. It offers an excellent exposition of regulatory capacity, institutional efficacy, and democratic legitimacy of governance institutions that shape development including a comprehensive analysis of how states are shaping business and human rights discourses locally to develop a critical understanding of identified issues by exploring the latest theories through comparative lenses.

Human Rights in Africa
Human Rights in Africa

Author: Bonny Ibhawoh

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-01-18

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 110834058X

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Human rights have a deep and tumultuous history that culminates in the age of rights we live in today, but where does Africa's story fit in with this global history? Here, Bonny Ibhawoh maps this story and offers a comprehensive and interpretative history of human rights in Africa. Rather than a tidy narrative of ruthless violators and benevolent protectors, this book reveals a complex account of indigenous African rights traditions embodied in the wisdom of elders and sages; of humanitarians and abolitionists who marshalled arguments about natural rights and human dignity in the cause of anti-slavery; of the conflictual encounters between natives and colonists in the age of Empire and the 'civilizing mission'; of nationalists and anti-colonialists who deployed an emergent lexicon of universal human rights to legitimize longstanding struggles for self-determination, and of dictators and dissidents locked in struggles over power in the era of independence and constitutional rights.