Model Law on Access to Information for Africa and other regional instruments: Soft law and human rights in Africa

Model Law on Access to Information for Africa and other regional instruments: Soft law and human rights in Africa

Author: Ololade Shyllon

Publisher: Pretoria University Law Press

Published: 2018-01-01

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Model Law on Access to Information for Africa and other regional instruments: Soft law and human rights in Africa Edited by Ololade Shyllon 2018 ISBN: 978-1-920538-87-3 Pages: 255 Print version: Available Electronic version: Free PDF available About the publication The adoption in 2013 of the Model Law on Access to Information for Africa by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights is an important landmark in the increasing elaboration of human rights-related soft law standards in Africa. Although non-binding, the Model Law significantly influenced the access to information landscape on the continent. Since the adoption of the Model Law, the Commission adopted several General Comments. The AU similarly adopted Model Laws such as the African Union Model Law on Internally Displaced Persons in Addressing Internal Displacement in Africa. This collection of essays inquires into the role and impact of soft law standards within the African human rights system and the AU generally. It assesses the extent to which these standards induced compliance, and identifies factors that contribute to generating such compliance. This book is a collection of papers presented at a conference organised by the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, with the financial support of the government of Norway, through the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Pretoria. Following the conference, the papers were reviewed and reworked. Table of Contents Acknowledgments Preface Contributors Abbreviations and acronyms PART I: THE MODEL LAW AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ACCESS TO INFORMATION IN AFRICA Introduction Ololade Shyllon The impact of the Model Law on Access to Information for Africa Fola Adeleke Implementing a Model Law on Access to Information in Africa: Lessons from the Americas Marianna Belalba and Alan Sears The implementation of the constitutional right of access to information in Africa: Opportunities and challenges Ololade Shyllon PART II: COUNTRY STUDIES The Model Law on Access to Information for Africa and the struggle for the review and passage of the Ghanaian Right to Information Bill of 2013 Ugonna Ukaigwe The impact of the Model Law on Access to Information for Africa on Kenya’s Access to Information framework Anne Nderi The Sudanese Access to Information Act 2015: A step forward? Ali Abdelrahman Ali Compliance through decoration: Access to information in Zimbabwe Nhlanhla Ngwenya PART III: INFLUENCE OF SOFT LAW WITHIN THE AFRICAN HUMAN RIGHTS SYSTEM Soft law and legitimacy in the African Union: The case of the Pretoria Principles on Ending Mass Atrocities Pursuant to Article 4(h) of the AU Constitutive Act Busingye Kabumba The incorporation of the thematic resolutions of the African Commission into the domestic laws of African countries Japhet Biegon General Comment 1 of the African Commission of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights: A source of norms and standard setting on sexual and reproductive health and rights Ebenezer Durojaye The African Union Model Law on Internally Displaced Persons: A critique Romola Adeola Selected bibliography


First Nations Women, Governance and the Indian Act

First Nations Women, Governance and the Indian Act

Author: Judith F. Sayers

Publisher:

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 9780662311409

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The first paper in this compilation is a review of the literature on First Nations women and self-government. It covers the following subject areas: traditional roles of First Nations women, the impact of colonization on those women, male leadership, contemporary First Nations women & sexual equality, and contemporary First Nations women & self-government. It also provides some legislative options, draft policies, recommendations, and general discussion of good governance from a First Nations women's perspective. The second paper addresses two questions: can & should the Indian Act be amended to provide for more equitable governing powers between First Nations women & men, and if amendments are desired, how can new regulations & policy improve the political participation of First Nations women. The questions are approached by investigating the responses of Lake Babine First Nation women to such questions and comparing this information with published analyses of women and First Nations governance. The final paper examines the history & rationale for the section 67 exemption of Indian Act matters from the Canadian Human Rights Act in the context of First Nations women's equality interests in governance. It reviews barriers to full realization of First Nations women's equality rights, particularly issues relating to Indian status & the band membership entitlement system, and decision-making by Indian Act band councils that reflects the arbitrary legal distinctions made in the Act.


Equity and Law

Equity and Law

Author: John C. P. Goldberg

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-08

Total Pages: 483

ISBN-13: 1108421318

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The fusion of law and equity in common law systems was a crucial moment in the development of the modern law. In this volume leading scholars assess the significance of the fusion of law and equity from comparative, doctrinal, historical and theoretical perspectives.


The Last Utopia

The Last Utopia

Author: Samuel Moyn

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2012-03-05

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 0674256522

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Human rights offer a vision of international justice that today’s idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. In this pioneering book, Samuel Moyn elevates that extraordinary transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal’s troubled present and uncertain future. For some, human rights stretch back to the dawn of Western civilization, the age of the American and French Revolutions, or the post–World War II moment when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was framed. Revisiting these episodes in a dramatic tour of humanity’s moral history, The Last Utopia shows that it was in the decade after 1968 that human rights began to make sense to broad communities of people as the proper cause of justice. Across eastern and western Europe, as well as throughout the United States and Latin America, human rights crystallized in a few short years as social activism and political rhetoric moved it from the hallways of the United Nations to the global forefront. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.


Cigars

Cigars

Author: National Cancer Institute (U.S.)

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Identifies upward trend in cigar use as potential serious public health problem.


Report on the Telephone Records Program Conducted Under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act and on the Operations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

Report on the Telephone Records Program Conducted Under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act and on the Operations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

Author: Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board

Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 9781495319228

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) is an independent bipartisan agency within the executive branch established by the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007. The Board is comprised of four part-time members and a full-time chairman, all appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. On June 5, 2013, the British newspaper The Guardian published the first of a series of articles based on unauthorized disclosures of classified documents by Edward Snowden, a contractor for the National Security Agency ("NSA"). The article described an NSA program to collect millions of telephone records, including records about purely domestic calls. Over the course of the next several days, there were additional articles regarding this program as well as another NSA program referred to in leaked documents as "PRISM." These disclosures caused a great deal of concern both over the extent to which they damaged national security and over the nature and scope of the surveillance programs they purported to reveal. In response to the congressional and presidential requests, the Board immediately initiated a study of the 215 and 702 programs and the operation of the FISA court. This Report contains the results of the Board's 215 program study as well as our analysis and recommendations regarding the FISC's operation.