ABSTRACT

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. 

chapter |1 pages

Introduction

Conceptualizing human rights issues in Africa

part Section I|1 pages

Africa and universal human rights

chapter 1|18 pages

Human rights and the politics of regime legitimation in Africa

From rights commissions to truth commissions

chapter 2|24 pages

Human rights in Africa

The African criminal court

part Section II|1 pages

Human rights and governance

chapter 5|18 pages

Youth movements

Emerging actors of the struggles for civil and political rights in sub-Saharan Africa

part Section III|1 pages

Disability rights

chapter 7|17 pages

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Historical antecedents and implications for disability rights and socioeconomic development in Africa

chapter 8|21 pages

Persons with albinism

Not ghosts, but human beings

chapter 9|14 pages

Disability rights are human rights

A situational analysis of persons with disabilities in Sierra Leone

chapter 10|21 pages

Mental health inequities in Africa

A human rights perspective

part Section IV|1 pages

Women’s rights

chapter 11|17 pages

Women’s land rights in sub-Saharan Africa

Between the law and cultural norms 1

chapter 14|17 pages

Conclusion

Towards an inclusive approach to human rights in Africa in an age of globalization