Let me begin with an anecdote that underscores the salience of the theme of this chapter. The story is told of a British anthropologist who, in pursuit of his grand career aspirations, decided to travel deep into the most obscure fringes of Africa for his research on a “primitive tribe.” This “primitive tribe” of Africa, he had been told, was so remote and distant that it had made no prior contact with civilization. So, armed with his safari outfit, camping boots, and research tools, he sets out for this exotic part of Africa, through vast virgin jungles and isolated deserts....

Zimbabwean courts have recently handed down judgments that have gotten women’s rights activists up in arms. Vennia Magaya sued her half-brother for her portion of their late father’s estate. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that “the nature of African society dictated that women were not equal to men. According to cultural norms, women should never be considered adults within the family, but only as a junior male or teenager.” Justice Gibson Muchetere argued that customary law prevails over statutory law. The Legal Age of Majority Act, 1982, which accords majority status to men and women upon reaching the age of...

Independence “negotiations” between metropolitan nations and their colonies led to the inclusion of some sort of “a bill of rights” in the constitutions of many postcolonial African states. At times, this constitutional provision was a demand of the colonizers in a bid to protect European settler communities against a possible backlash from the new dispensation of African majority rule. Most often, however, it was seen as a natural outcome of the rights discourse that had informed African nationalists in their struggles for independence.

The language of rights during the struggle for decolonization was, of course, itself a legacy of the...

A notable Nigerian jurist once commented on the growing uncertainty surrounding the meaning of the rule of law. He must have been referring to the present generation of African youth, many of whom were born in the midst of civil crises, raised within the confines of a militarized society and schooled in the art of trading or stretching identities for survival. For these, there is no debate about the universality or otherwise of human rights, only a yawning vacuum about what qualifies as a human right, and what is meant by the rule of law.

This chapter begins with an...

It goes without saying that the issue of human rights is a twentieth- and twenty-first-century phenomenon. This is so because the intellectual discourse on this problem and reaction to it gathered momentum after the Second World War. Before 1945, the primacy of the sovereign nation-state in international relations relegated the discussion on human rights issues to domestic politics. In this respect, violations of the rights of minority groups, and even genocidal policies, were considered the internal affairs of sovereign nation-states with which other sovereign nations were forbidden to interfere.

Operationally, minorities refer to the individual level of identification with a...

At a time when democracy has made notable strides in being accepted as a universal value (Sen, 1997), it seems to be encountering a growing threat from globalization. The principal objective of this chapter is to examine how the post-Cold War phase of the global capitalist order (globalization) has impacted the democratization struggle in Africa. An analysis of the relationship between globalization and democracy is rather complex, partly because the two variables are processes that take considerable time to develop. The relationship cannot be meaningfully established by simply measuring outcomes. It can, however, be captured to a satisfactory degree by...

Human rights have undergone a complete process of evolution. The history and development of human rights can be traced back to the days when the “rights of man” literally meant the “rights of white men.” In those days, the rights of black men were not included in the concept of equality. As one writer aptly puts it, “It took a long time for the United States . . . to include black men in their concept of equal rights . . . it took an even longer time to include women in this process and thereby move away from ‘the...

This chapter attempts to show, using military regimes in Nigeria as an example, that serious human rights violation and repression by the state may be a facade for grand corruption, and that grand corruption is a major cause of economic decline, especially in a developing economy. The argument that compromises in human rights observance may be necessary for rapid economic development has been cynically applied to justify regimes of terror whose sole purpose is the plundering of national resources.¹ Human rights violations then become a key component of the policy of “keeping the cow steady while it is being milked.”...

The concept of respect for others—the notion that there are certain things that we cannot do to one another, and some duties we owe to each other—is common to all civilizations, although these core interests that must be respected have been defined differently by various cultures throughout history.¹ The most significant determinant of these core interests have been periods of social conflict and strife, after which people looked back and asked themselves how this happened, and how a recurrence in the future can be prevented (Cotler 1993: 7). The question is which interests must be respected to ensure...

This chapter discusses the current position of the Bill of Rights and the Rule of Law in Tanzania. In particular, the chapter seeks to explain various enactments and/or amendments to some of the laws in Tanzania, and evaluate how this process of legal reform together with other statutory provisions, judicial and quasi-judicial decisions, and as executive actions have affected the content and the nature of human rights protection. In other words, can human rights be secured through the rule of law in Tanzania?

Tanzania, like several other African countries, has been politically independent for only about four decades. At the...

There is nothing new in arguing that the 1990s was a decade of apparent stagnation in terns of democracy and of inconsistent progress on the human rights front in Egypt. The more significant and critical issue that has to be assessed is the traumatic condition mainstream Egyptian culture has reached concerning human rights, tolerance, and issues of pluralism. Egypt has become increasingly more inward looking and highly cautious, abandoning the cosmopolitanism of its cultural heritage. Part of the context for this lies in the cumulative shocks and frustrations brought about by several American-Israeli attacks, which have engendered a general sense...

The United States has historically had a nebulous foreign policy agenda toward Africa. Although America’s creed has always been liberty, freedom, and justice for all, these principles have not always guided its policy toward Africa. United States policy toward Africa has fundamentally been based on its national interests, which have shifted over time. During the Cold War, the major components of U.S. foreign policy toward Africa were the East-West rivalry, rooted in containing the speed of communism on the continent, maintaining access to strategic minerals, including oil in the Middle East, and bilateral aid (Shraeder, 1992; Forsythe, 1990; Bienen, 1993).¹...

The human rights movement is largely the product of the horrors of World War II. The development of its normative content and structure is the direct result of the abominations committed by the Third Reich during that war. Drawing on the Western liberal tradition, the human rights movement arose primarily to control and contain state action against the individual. The two principal documents of the movement—the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)—largely establish hands-off rights that either limit or prohibit altogether government intrusion into the private...

In broad outline, the close of the twentieth century was a period in which global links grew stronger. Increased emphasis was placed on the interdependence of states rather than on their separate sovereignties, and on the rule of law than the will of capricious dictators. Comparing the two ends of the century, crucial differences could be noted. Human rights rest upon the rule of law; international promotion and protection of them depend upon a global community able to extend across frontiers.

The current dramatically expanded role of human rights-oriented NGOs (internal and external), the groups with which this chapter is...

There is nothing romantic, peculiar, dark, or mysterious about Africa that denies the fundamental interdependence, indivisibility, and universality of all rights, including civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights. The reality in Africa as in other parts of the world, however, is that these rights are routinely undermined and systematically violated.

Africa’s liberation has always been predicated on socioeconomic and political transformation from colonial bondage, poverty, patriarchy, and racial inequality. It is within this context that the rule of law and more particularly the nature and role of law in Africa must be understood and examined. In this context, the...

The role of civil society in the democratization process in Africa has gained a great deal of scholarly attention in the past ten years or so. For a great number of scholars this role is so critical that it is difficult to envisage a successful democratization process in Africa without a well-organized civil society. Hence, most Africanist scholars would tend to agree with the assertion by David Hirschman (1994: 31) that “formal democratic state institutions will not by themselves generate substantive . . . and sustained democracies without the support of, and accountability to, pluralist, informed and well organized non-government...

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a steady development of a human rights protection regime for displaced populations. Of concern in this development was a glaring discrepancy between developments at the theoretical level, which have influenced development of norms and conventions at the highest policy making levels, and the difficulties associated with the implementation and realization of the rights of displaced populations at the local level where violations occur. The expanding debates on issues of human rights and the increase in the creation of instruments of protection have hardly translated directly into the realization of rights. In many...