Human Rights, the Rule of Law, and Development in Africa.

• Date: 01 January 2006
• Author: Hellerstein, Margaret

Human Rights, the Rule of Law, and Development in Africa, edited by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza and Philip J. McConnaughay

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press (2004)

Price: $49.95

The 1990s saw a wave of democratization across Africa that transformed the political landscape of the continent. Before 1990, all but a very few states were ruled by one-party or one-man regimes, and (with the exception of apartheid leaders), no African leader had ever left office due to an electoral defeat. By the end of the 1990s, however, virtually all the sub-Saharan African states had begun, or attempted to begin, the process of democratization. Yet many of these regimes are democracies only in name. Although the political systems have changed, human rights abuses are rampant and, in many countries, the pretense of multiparty elections is just that. Human Rights, the Rule of Law, and Development in Africa, edited by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza and Philip J. McConnaughay, explores in detail the issues these nascent democracies face, asking how states with unstable and corrupt regimes can move from the first phase of democratization to the implementation of the rule of law. Through essays contributed by scholars and human rights activists, the book presents different perspectives on the issues arising from Africa's democratization in the 1990s. The collection addresses a series of questions about this period of democratization. What went wrong? What went right? What can we learn from the successes and failures of the 1990s about how to tackle current problems? In collecting these essays, Zeleza and McConnaughay seek to address the underlying phenomena and historical events that have influenced, and will continue to influence, the degree of democratic success in establishing rule of law.

The essays cohere into three sections. The first examines Western and African discourses on human rights, asking how universalism and relativism may be balanced to achieve justice as well as respect for cross-cultural norms. The second section examines more practical dimensions of the protection and subversion of human rights on the African continent with respect to development and politics, asking whether the language of human rights translates into actual changes for the populations. The final section looks at the role of NGOs in contributing to development and human rights in Africa.

The first section, "Universalism and Relativism in Human Rights Discourse," asks whether the...