Rights and the Politics of Recognition in Africa PDF Download

Author: Harri Englund
Publisher: Zed Books
ISBN: 9781842772836
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Author: Laher, Ridwan
Publisher: Africa Institute of South Africa
ISBN: 0798304642
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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This volume is an attempt to provide this intersectional and reflexive space. The thinking behind the book began in Lamu in mid-2010. It was a time when growing community resistance emerged towards the Kenyan government's plan to build a second seaport under a trans-frontier infrastructural project known as the Lamu Port- South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET). The editors agreed that a book that draws community activists, academics, researchers and policy makers into a discussion of the predicament of indigenous rights and development against the backdrop of the Endorois case was timely and needed. Assembled here are the original contributions of some of the leading contemporary thinkers in the area of indigenous and human rights in Africa. The book is an interdisciplinary effort with the single purpose of thinking through indigenous rights after the Endorois case but it is not a singular laudatory remark on indigenous life in Africa. The discussion begins by framing indigenous rights and claims to indigeneity as found in the Endorois decision and its related socio-political history. Subsequent chapters provide deeper contextual analysis by evaluating the tense relationship between indigenous peoples and the post-colonial nation-state. Overall, the book makes a peering and provocative contribution to the relational interests between state policies and the developmental intersections of indigeneity, indigenous rights, gender advocacy, environmental conservation, chronic trauma and transitional justice.

Author: Edward Kofi Quashigah
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004636056
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 637

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Any attempt to address the ever-present problem of instability in Africa gives rise to questions regarding legitimate governance. Without future thinking and action on the legitimacy of governance in Africa and how to secure it, past mistakes will go unheeded rather than informing forward movement. Surprisingly, no existing work has comprehensively addressed this critical issue. Legitimate Governance in Africa provides this needed coverage for the first time, examining such key components in the struggle for legitimate governance as the role of the international community in addressing the problem, the particular role women can play and ways in which women can improve their involvement in the whole enterprise of governance, and the roles of non-governmental organizations and civil society. In this diverse collection of essays, a wide range of expert legal contributors, all familiar with the status of the struggle for legitimate governance in a specific institution or particular African state, brings unique perspectives to the scholarly investigation of legitimate governance in Africa. The individual authors have thought deeply about the complexities and subtleties of conducting and evaluating the business of African state governance, considering both the practical sustainability of potential approaches and theoretical problems and issues. The probing, high-quality essays facilitate a real understanding of the obstacles to progress in the struggle for legitimate governance. Through their depth and diversity of views, every one of the papers included in this collection enriches the pool of knowledge on this important subject.

Author: Ronald Cohen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813012209
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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"The volume stands out both in its timeliness and in the originality of its 'new thinking' about human rights on the continent. . . . The editors offer excellent intellectual leadership to this project."--Crawford Young, University of Wisconsin, Madison The often oppressive existence endured by ordinary Africans means that human rights issues, along with political and economic ones, are central to Africa's progress. The 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, signed by African leaders, takes the stance that human rights in Africa must honor the traditional African concern for the collective over the sanctity and integrity of the individual. The editors and authors of this book argue against that consensus, defending the position that human rights are universal. The contributors ask whether the idea of universal human rights is tenable theoretically and practically, coming at the issue from bases of social and political theory, history, and law. They conclude that the views on human rights in Africa need to move in the direction of international thinking on the issue, a posture not merely Western but quintessentially human. The book has much to offer students of African and international studies, human rights specialists, and others concerned with human rights issues. Contents Part I. Theoretical Perspectives Endless Teardrops: Prolegomena to the Study of Human Rights in Africa, by Ronald Cohen Human Rights and Precolonial Africa, by Timothy Fernyhough Human and Peoples' Rights: What Point Is Africa Trying to Make? by H. W. O. Okoth-Ogendo The African Human Rights Process: A Contextual Policy-Oriented Approach, by Winston P. Nagan Part II. Substantive Issues Women's Rights and the Right to Development, by Rhoda E. Howard African Refugees: Defining and Defending Their Human Rights, by Art Hansen "Life Is War": Human Rights, Political Violence, and Struggles for Power in Lesotho, by Robert Shanafelt The National Language Question and Minority Language Rights in Africa: A Nigerian Case Study, by F. Niyi Akinnaso Education and Rights in Nigeria, by Ajuji Ahmed and Ronald Cohen Academic Freedom in Africa: A Right Long Overlooked, by Goran Hyden The Challenges of Domesticating Rights in Africa, by Goran Hyden Ronald Cohen is professor of anthropology and African studies at the University of Florida; among his many books and articles on Africa is Satisfying Africa's Food Needs (1988). Goran Hyden is professor of political science at the University of Florida; his books on African politics and development include No Shortcuts to Progress (1983). Winston Nagan, professor of law and affiliate professor of anthropology at the University of Florida, chaired the board of Amnesty International (USA) from 1989 to 1991.

Author: Will Kymlicka
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0199233802
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Most countries around the world exhibit a long history of exclusion and discrimination directed against ethnic, racial, national, religious, or ideological groups. The underlying justifications for these forms of exclusion have been increasingly discredited by the post-war human rights revolution, decolonization, and by contemporary norms of liberal-democratic constitutionalism, with their commitment to equal rights and non-discrimination. However, even as these older practices and ideologies of exclusion are discredited and repudiated, they continue to have enduring effects. The legacies of exclusion can still be seen in a wide range of social attitudes, cultural practices, economic and demographic patterns, and institutional rules that obstruct efforts to build genuinely inclusive societies of equal citizens. Finding ways to overcome this problem is a major challenge facing virtually every society around the world. The Politics of Reconciliation in Multicultural Societies focuses on two parallel intellectual and political movements that have arisen to address this challenge: the 'politics of reconciliation', with its focus on reparations, truth-telling and healing amongst former adversaries, and the 'politics of difference', with its focus on the recognition and empowerment of minorities in multicultural societies. Both the politics of reconciliation and the politics of difference are having a profound impact on the theory and practice of democracy around the world, but remarkably little has been written about the relationship between them. This book aims to fill that gap. Drawing on both theoretical analysis and case studies from around the world, the authors explore how the politics of reconciliation and the politics of difference often interact in mutually supportive ways, as reconciliation leads to more multicultural conceptions of citizenship. But there are also important ways in which the two may compete in their aims and methods. The Politics of Reconciliation in Multicultural Societies is the first attempt to systematically explore these areas of potential convergence and divergence.

Author: Robert K. Hitchcock
Publisher: IWGIA
ISBN: 9788791563089
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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This book is concerned with the first peoples (those people who are considered indigenous by themselves and others) of southern Africa such as the San, the Nama, and the Khoi, and their rights. Although living in democratic countries like Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Botswana --and in principle sharing the same rights and responsibilities as the rest of the population--practice shows that these peoples more often than not are at the margins of the societies in which they live; they often face extreme poverty, and they frequently are subjected to discriminatory treatment and exposed to all kinds of human rights abuses. Robert K. Hitchcock is professor of anthropology and geography at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA. He has done extensive research and development work in southern Africa in general and among San peoples in particular. Diana Vinding is an anthropologist working with the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) in Copenhagen.

Author: Claude Emerson Welch (Jr.)
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Human Rights and Development in Africa focuses on the variety of typical and significant human rights issues that trouble the African continent. The first book to explore these issues in an interdisciplinary manner, its fourteen chapters provide domestic, regional, and international perspectives for assessing the situation. Among the topics given detailed attention are: practices in Southern Africa, women’s rights, Islamic thought, the legal and historical background to the African Charter, the role of nongovernmental organizations in protecting African human rights, and the treatment of human rights and development issues in various North-South contexts. In addition, the editors provide a guide to library resources, a lengthy bibliography, the text and substantive assessment of the African Charter, and an integrative overview of major problems in defining and protecting rights in Africa. Contributors to the volume are internationally-known specialists on African politics, human rights, and international political economy.

Author: Anna Geis
Publisher: New Approaches to Conflict Ana
ISBN: 9781526152756
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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This edited volume examines asymmetric conflict dynamics through the politics of recognition vis-à-vis armed non-state actors. It explores a diverse range of case studies and considers the risks and opportunities that (non-)recognition may involve for transforming armed conflicts.

Author: Harri Englund
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520249233
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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"This is an exceptionally interesting and well researched book on a topic of enormous importance. It brings careful ethnographic fieldwork to bear on the new 'culture of rights' that has developed in democratized post-colonial African states such as Malawi, and by doing so develops a powerful and consequential critique."--James Ferguson, Stanford University "In this exceptionally rich and thought-provoking study of human rights fundamentalism in Malawi, Harri Englund makes an original contribution to debates on democracy, freedom, civil society, and poverty in Africa. His vivid ethnographic prose brings to life Malawian human rights activists, their expatriate benefactors as well as the urban and rural poor. This is a major contribution on a major topic."--Francis B. Nyamnjoh, Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa

Author: Mawere, Munyaradzi
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG
ISBN: 9956763004
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Questions surrounding democracy, governance, and development especially in the view of Africa have provoked acrimonious debates in the past few years. It remains a perennial question why some decades after political independence in Africa the continent continues experiencing bad governance, lagging behind socioeconomically, and its democracy questionable. We admit that a plethora of theories and reasons, including iniquitous and malicious ones, have been conjured in an attempt to explain and answer the questions as to why Africa seems to be lagging behind other continents in issues pertaining to good governance, democracy and socio-economic development. Yet, none of the theories and reasons proffered so far seems to have provided enduring solutions to Africa’s diverse complex problems and predicaments. This book dissects and critically examines the matrix of Africa’s multifaceted problems on governance, democracy and development in an attempt to proffer enduring solutions to the continent’s long-standing political and socio-economic dilemmas and setbacks.