Engendering Human Rights: Cultural and Socio-Economic Realities in Africa

by O. Nnaemeka, J. Ezeilo

Overview

Engendering Human Rights brings together distinguished scholars and feminist activists in a collection of essays on human rights in Africa. Contributors explore the formulating, monitoring, reporting, and implementation of human rights in Africa and the African Diaspora. The individual chapters examine how human rights frameworks and practices differ in various political, economic, social, cultural, racial and gendered contexts througout Africa.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781403967077
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	05/11/2005
Series:	Comparative Feminist Studies
Edition description:	2005
Pages:	314
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

OBIOMA NNAEMEKA is a Professor of French and Women's Studies and President of the Association of African Women Scholars, Indiana University, USA.

JOY EZEILO is a Human Rights Lawyer and activist. She is also the Executive Director of Women's Aid Collective.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Context(ure) of Human Rights; J.Ezeilo & O.Nnaemeka PART I: THE RIGHT TO HEALTH AT THE INTERSECTION OF GENDER, RACE AND CLASS Apartheid and Health Professional Accountability: Violations of Reproductive Rights of Women; J.de Gruchy & L.Baldwin-Ragaven Take Me to the Village: African Women and the Dynamic of Health and Human Rights in Tanzania and Zimbabwe; S.Nzenza-Shand The Right to Reproductive Health in South African Constitution - A Real Victory for Women?; L.Feris PART II: SITES OF STRUGGLE: THE PERSONAL IN POLITICAL Women, Religion and Postmodernism; N.El Saadawi Women from the Maghrib and Sub-Saharan Africa in France: Fighting for Health and Basic Human Rights; C.Raissiguier Women's Rights as Human Rights: Re-Writing African Women's (Auto)biography; M.Kolawale PART III: THE RIGHTS OF FEMALE CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS The Girl-Child in Africa: From Rhetoric to Action - Towards Economic Empowerment; U.Ewelukwa Poverty, Adolescent Sexuality and the Shadow of AIDS: A Study of Female Motor Park Workers in Lagos, Nigeria; S.Babalola & P.Nwashili Sociocultural Barriers to the Education of Kenyan Girls: Gender Discrimination and Sexual Violence in Secondary Schools; K.L.Webster PART IV: VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN: INVASIONS OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPACES The Impact of Human Rights Discourse on the Traditional Practice of Female Genital Mutilation; C.Packer Unveiling the Mask of Privacy: Protecting Survivors of Violence Against Women in Kenya; J.Kamau Wife battery Among Workers in a Nigerian University: Prevalence, Nature, and the Rights of Women; M.Tiamiyu PART V: IN SEARCH OF SOLUTIONS Female Genital Mutilation: Campaigns in Germany; T.Levin Readability of Children's Rights Documents: The LIASSO Experience, N.Osakwe & N.Nwodo

Editorial Reviews

"This book provides an important African perspective to the international debate and struggle for women's human rights. It focuses on social, economic and cultural rights of women, within a human rights framework, that has long been biased towards civil and political rights. The contributors' essays will lead to greater understanding of the gender dimensions of the human rights challenges faced by women in Africa, especially in areas dealing with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, religious fundamentalism, violence and the rights of female children and adolescents. The book is essential reading for students and academics in Women's Studies, African Studies and International Studies as well as for human rights activists." - Professor Filomina Chioma Steady, Wellesley College

"A lucid contribution to human rights discourses that focuses on the concrete realities of gender and culture in Africa." - Francoise Lionnet UCLA, author of Postcolonial Representations: Women, Literature, Identity.

"This is a work of considerable significance in terms of its concerns, scope and approaches. The materials which illuminate key gender perspectives to invigorate human rights interventions clearly demonstrate the unsustainability of the conventional dichotomy between the so-called generations of human rights in a context characterized by the material challenges that confront Africa." - Leslye Obiora, Professor of Law and Founder, Institute for Research on African Women, Children, and Culture (IRAWCC)

From the Publisher