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This edited collection explores key human rights themes and situates them in the context of developments on the African continent. It examines critical debates in human rights bringing together conceptually and empirically rich contributions from leading thinkers in human rights and African studies. Drawing on scholarly insights from the fields of constitutional law, human rights, development, feminist studies, public health, and media studies, the volume contributes to scholarly debates on constitutionalism, the right to water, securitization of development, environmental and transitional justice, sexual rights, conflict and gender-based violence, the right to development, and China’s deepening role in Africa. Consequently, it makes an important scholarly intervention on timely issues pertaining to the African continent and beyond.
An interpretative history of human rights in Africa, exploring indigenous rights traditions, anti-slavery, anti-colonialism, post-colonial violations and pro-democracy movements.
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.
The African human rights system has undergone some remarkable developments since the adoption of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, the cornerstone of the African human rights system, in June 1981. The year2011 marked the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the African Charter. It also marked 25 years since the African Charter entered into force on 21 October 1986.This book aims to provide reflections on most of the major human rights issues in the past 30 years of the African human rights system in practice and discussion on the future: the African Charter s impact and contribution to the respect, protection and promotion of human rights in Africa; the contemporary challenges faced by the African Human rights system in responding adequately to the demands of rapidly evolving African societies; and how the African human rights system can be strengthened in the future to ensure that the human rights protected in the African Charter, as developed in the jurisprudence of the African Commission since the Commission was inaugurated in 1987, are realised in practice.The chapters in this volume bring together the work of 20 human rights scholars and practitioners, with expertise in human rights in Africa, under the following general themes: rights and duties in the African Charter; rights of the vulnerable under the African system; implementation mechanisms for human rights in Africa; and towards an effective African regional human rights system.
This volume reports on the state of crisis in Africa in the early twenty-first century. Africa, on the eve of the ‘independence revolution’, was the continent of hope and high expectations. By the third decade of independence, optimism had been replaced by dismality. African states had been beset by ethno-political squabbles, military rule, civil wars, Islamic and insurgent movements, extreme poverty and disease. With the ascent of redemocratization in the 1990s and of ‘new’ pan-Africanism derived from the formation of the African Union, Africa appeared set to claim its vaunted destiny. This book asks, with hindsight to the first decade of the twenty-first century: how real was the renaissance in African life? If the dismal African condition is a phase in the historical development of Africa, this volume does not see any golden age in the past to which Africa aspires to return. There is clearly a continuation and persistence of crisis, with an absence of good governance, personalisation of state power, widespread disease, and policy failure in education, economy and infrastructural development. Although endowed with abundant human and natural resources, Africa remains the least developed and most indebted continent. Whither then the African Renaissance? The methodologies that underpin the contributions in this book are as diverse as the specialisations of the contributors. The collection questions ideologically protected assumptions and presumptions, presenting Africa as it is, because it is only by knowing where Africa truly stands that a proper direction can be charted for it.
1 The dominant discourse
Religions in Contemporary Africa is an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the three main religious traditions on the African continent, African indigenous religions, Christianity and Islam. The book provides a historical overview of these important traditions and focuses on the roles they play in African societies today. It includes social, cultural and political case studies from across the continent on the following topical issues: Witchcraft and modernity Power and politics Conflict and peace Media and popular culture Development Human rights Illness and health Gender and sexuality With suggestions for further reading, discussion questions, illustrations and a list of glossary terms this is the ideal textbook for students in religion, African studies and adjacent fields approaching this subject area for the first time.
The book explores the broad range of legal, personal, social, political and historical foundations of international law. The book is a collective effort of qualified authors- law school deans and professors, national and international court judges, young and old international law scholars and government lawyers from varying legal cultures across the oceans of the world, representing diverse legal philosophical and corresponding practices bringing their stories to life, telling tales helpful for those well-acquainted with the issues. Although one book of Liber Amicorum cannot address all the important issues in the vast arena of international law, these essays provide a rich and lucid understanding of issues of modern public international and comparative law. The beauty of the book lies in the fact that the issues discussed in the compendium by the diverse authors though familiar to comparatists, are given perspectives different from the usual Euro-American centrist standpoint that dominated the current writings in international law. The collected essays will be found most useful as an informative tool in the discovery of progressive development of international law as well as in the study of comparative legal systems. *** The legal essays contained in this treatise on various important issues of public international and comparative law are interesting, well researched, and written from multi-disciplinary perspectives by very well-qualified legal scholars from different backgrounds and cultures of the world. All the authors are exceptionally knowledgeable and experts in their chosen fields. It is strongly urged that people should read these essays in order to fully appreciate the contributions of international legal scholars to world peace, international development, understanding and progress. Nothing can be more befitting in honoring Professor Dr. Christian Nwachukwu Okeke for his enormous contributions to the positive development of the legal academy nationally and internationally. Professor Dr. Emmanuel Omoh Esiemokhai Ph.D., Academic Chancellor, Bosas International Law Bureau, Abuja, Nigeria Chima Nweze's Contemporary Issues on Public International and Comparative Law: Essays in Honor of Professor Christian Nwachukwu Okeke, is a magisterial work of enormous scope and depth that brings together a diverse group of internationally distinguished authors from academia, government and private practice. The Liber Amicorum is impressive both in range of subject matter and quality of analysis and merits the attention of scholars and global policy makers. Ndiva Kofele Kale, Ph.D., J.D., Professor of Law, Southern Methodist University, Dedman School of Law, Dallas, Texas Professor C.N. Okeke is a very fine scholar in international law. He has taught the subject in Universities in Africa, Europe and the United States. In all these continents, he has made tremendous impact on students of the subject. I regard the essays as a useful epilogue to his successful career as a teacher and researcher of international law. I heartily recommend the essays to all that are interested in the study of international law. I have no doubt in my mind that the essays will provide a useful addition to the growing literature in international law. I commend the contributors for a worthy compendium.