The Concept Of Human Rights In Africa

1 The dominant discourse

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.

An interpretative history of human rights in Africa, exploring indigenous rights traditions, anti-slavery, anti-colonialism, post-colonial violations and pro-democracy movements.

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Whilst the establishment of the African human rights system was a good gesture that signalled the recognition of the value and essence of international human rights in the continent, a continuous study of the system has become necessary. This is particularly in light of the fact that the continent is in desperate need of well established and effective regional human rights enforcement mechanisms. At the moment, the regional human rights system is stuck between prospects and pitfalls because of the gap that exists between the promise of human rights and their actual realisation. By all means, this trend needs to be reversed. The main objective and purpose of this book is to underscore the challenges besetting the effective enforcement of international human rights law in Africa and the prospects and promises of an effective regional human rights system.

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Public International Law and Human Rights, grade: A (8/10), University of Ghana, Legon (Department of Political Science), language: English, abstract: This essay's aim is to reconceptualize Human Rights from an African perspective. Many have argued that traditional African societies gave no room for the expression of individual rights. What rather existed was group rights - i.e. group rights competed with and suppressed individual entitlements in the traditional African settings. Arguably, it must be said that whiles modern conception of human rights is attributable to the modern western history, no culture can claim any historical glory. The idea of equal and inalienable human rights was missing not only in non-western traditions but also in western societies. For many Africanists, traditional mores gave better expression to human rights than the current neo-colonial states. The different worldview regarding cosmology, ontology and metaphysics, gave expression to their human rights conceptions. African societies are built on the principle of communitarianism manifest in the extended family systems. Thus, the stricter sense of individualism, which is at the core of modernism is inconceivable in Africa. Individual and group rights are entwined in a typical African setting. Collective rights, arguably, complement rather than compete with individual rights. The full enjoyment of individual rights is inseparably conditioned on the rights of the group to which one belongs. I delve into this debate to examine the nexus between communism and expression of human rights in Africa.

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.