Expanding Perspectives on Human Rights in Africa

This book draws attention to emerging issues around the rights of minorities, marginalized groups, and persons in Africa. It explores the gaps between human rights provisions and conditions, showing that although international human rights principles have been embraced in the continent, various minority groups and marginalized persons are denied such rights through criminalization and persecution. African countries have a good record of signing and ratifying international and regional rights instruments but the political will and capacity for enforcing these with respect to minorities remain weak. International contributors to the book provide new perspectives on the rights of marginalized and minority groups in different parts of Africa and the extent to which they are deprived or denied entitlement to the universality and equality articulated in law. The authors show that human rights, while having come of age as a moral ideal, has not been fully entrenched in practice towards groups such as children, indigenous populations, the mentally ill, persons with disabilities, and persons with albinism. This volume is geared toward scholars, students, human rights groups, policy makers, social workers, international organizations, and policy makers in the fields of criminology, security studies, development studies, political science, sociology, children studies, social psychology, international relations, postcolonial studies, and African Studies.

INTRODUCTION Conceptualizing Human Rights Issues in Africa M. Raymond Izarali, Oliver Masakure, and Bonny Ibhawoh SECTION I: AFRICA AND UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS Chapter 1: Human Rights and the Politics of Regime Legitimation in Africa: From Rights Commissions to Truth Commissions Bonny Ibhawoh Chapter 2: Human Rights in Africa: The African Criminal Court Thomas Rose SECTION 2: HUMAN RIGHTS AND GOVERNANCE Chapter 3: Structural Inequalities, Exclusion and Minorities in Africa Oliver Masakure Chapter 4: Old-Age Poverty, Human Rights, and Social Protection for the Elderly in Nigeria Olabanji Akinola Chapter 5: Youth Movements: Emerging Actors of the Struggles for Civil and Political Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa Lamine Diallo and Ousmane Aly Diallo Chapter 6: The Sustainable Development Goals as Human Rights Joannes Paulus Yimbesalu and David Zakus SECTION 3: DISABILITY RIGHTS Chapter 7: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Historical Antecedents and Implications for Disability Rights and Socioeconomic Development in Africa Jeff Grischow Chapter 8: Persons with Albinism: not ghosts, but human beings Jean Burke Chapter 9: Disability Rights are human Rights: A Situational Analysis of Persons with Disabilities in Sierra Leone Sylvester Amara Lamin Chapter 10: Mental Health Inequities in Africa: A Human Rights Perspective Consoler Teboh SECTION 4: WOMEN’S RIGHTS Chapter 11: Women’s Land Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa: Between the Law and Cultural Norms Paul Ocheje Chapter 12: Women’s rights, food entitlements, and governance in urban Uganda Andrea Brown Chapter 13: Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Rights in Contemporary Africa Ramola Ramtohul CONCLUSION Chapter 14: Towards an Inclusive Approach to Human Rights Enjoyment and Protection in Africa in an Age of Globalization M. Raymond Izarali

M. Raymond Izarali is a philosopher and Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada. He is a Fellow and former director of the Tshepo Institute for the Study of Contemporary Africa at the same institution. His research interests include globalization, global terrorism and security, human rights theory, Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia. He has published two co-edited books, The Contemporary Caribbean: Issues and Challenges (2013) and Security, Education and Development in Contemporary Africa (Routledge, London, 2017); and a sole edited book, Crime, Violence and Security in the Caribbean (Routledge, New York, 2018). Oliver Masakure is Associate Professor in Business Technology Management. He holds a joint appointment in the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics and Human Rights & Human Diversity at Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada. He is a Fellow and former director of the Tshepo Institute for the Study of Contemporary Africa at the same institution. An applied economist, his research and publishing focus is on the economics of innovation, labour economics, and development economics.He previously published a co-edited book, Security, Education and Development in Contemporary Africa (Routledge, London, 2017). Bonny Ibhawoh is Professor of History and Global Human Rights at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada. He has taught in universities in Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. He was previously a Human Rights Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs, New York, USA; a Research Fellow at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, Copenhagen, Denmark; and Associate Member of the Centre for African Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK. He is the author of several books and journal articles on African history and politics, human rights, and imperial history, including Imperialism and Human Rights (1998); Imperial Justice: Africans in Empire’s Court (2013); and Human Rights in Africa (2017). He is a member of the College of Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada.