1st Edition
Legalization of Human Rights in Africa The Institutionalization of Laws Prohibiting State-Sanctioned Violence and Torture
Introduction to Legalization of Human Rights in Africa
By Stacey M. Mitchell, Veraline Nchotu, Lem Lilian Atanga
Part 1: The Theory, The Model, And The International Regimes Regulating State-Sponsored Violence
1 What is legalization?
By Stacey M. Mitchell
2 An integrative model for the assessment of legalization as congruence
By Stacey M. Mitchell
3 The international legal framework for prohibitions against torture, disappearances, and political killings
By Stacey M. Mitchell
4 The African human rights regime
By Stacey M. Mitchell and Lem Lilian Atanga
5 The UN Charter-Based Processes and Evaluations of Africa’s Conflicts and Human Rights Protections
By Henry F. (Chip) Carey
Part II: Continent-Wide Progress In The Legalization Of Prohibitions Against Torture, Disappearances And Killings
6 Taking the broad view
By Stacey M. Mitchell, Veraline Nchotu, and Lem Lilian Atanga
7 Do peace missions in Africa matter?
By Miao-ling Lin Hasenkamp and Stacey M. Mitchell
8 How foreign investment fuels social conflicts in Africa
By Yue Lin
Part III: Case-Studies
9 Cameroon and human rights at a time of national crisis
By Roland Djieufack
10 The struggle for human rights in Guinea
By Jean Francois Koly Onivogui
11 Civil society and the struggle for human rights in Tunisia
By Khedija Arfaoui
12 Zimbabwe and a reassessment of Institutional Anomie Theory
By Shannon M. Gibson
13 The power of regional peripheries: The making and unmaking of the legalization of human rights in Mali
By Miao-ling Lin Hasenkamp
14 Human rights as a moving target in Botswana
By Kholisani Solo
15 Conclusions
By Stacey M. Mitchell, Lem Lilian Atanga and Miao-ling Lin Hasenkamp
Biography
Stacey M. Mitchell is an Associate Professor at Georgia State University’s Perimeter College, USA.
Veraline Nchotu is a Research Fellow at Northeastern Illinois University’s Genocide and Human Rights Research in Africa and the Diaspora Center, USA.
Lem Lilian Atanga is Associate Professor, Centre for Gender and African Studies, University of Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
“Using cross country comparisons, this thought-provoking book captures the complexity of domestic legalization processes, offering new insights on the importance of civil society actors to lawmaking and law implementing processes. The book makes important contributions to the literature of human rights development in Africa and the legalization of human rights law in political science.”
Carrie Booth Walling, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Human Rights Program, University of Minnesota, USA
“This volume is a welcome addition to the growing scholarly literature on the challenges facing efforts to institutionalize human rights laws prohibiting state sanctioned violence in Africa. The editors, Stacey Mitchell, Veraline Nchotu and Lem Lilian Atanga, and the contributors to this analytically insightful and empirically grounded project critically examine the concept of legalization using Lon Fuller's criterion of congruence. Challenging traditional understandings of legalization in the IR literature, they argue that it should be understood as an interactive process which impacts and is impacted by those involved in the processes of domestic lawmaking and accountability. According to them, the real test in assessing the domestic legalization of human rights is "the extent to which lawmaking and accountability processes are fair and inclusive." Providing a more comprehensive understanding of the factors that enable and hinder the domestic legalization of international human rights laws has important implications for the work of scholars and practitioners focusing on violence prevention in a region in which several countries are at risk for mass atrocity crimes.”
George Andreopoulos, Professor of Political Science and Criminal Justice, City University of New York, USA
