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Presence through absence? Understanding the role of capital in the African Human Rights Action Plan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2021

Obiora Chinedu Okafor ,
Sanaa Ahmed ,
Sylvia Bawa  and
Ibironke Odumosu-Ayanu
Obiora Chinedu Okafor*
Affiliation:
Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, Canada
Sanaa Ahmed*
Affiliation:
Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
Sylvia Bawa*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, York University, Toronto, Canada
Ibironke Odumosu-Ayanu*
Affiliation:
College of Law, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
*
Email: ookafor@osgoode.yorku.ca
Email: sanaa.ahmed2011@gmail.com
Email: bawa@yorku.ca
Email: ibironke.odumosu@usask.ca
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Abstract

This study examines the African Human Rights Action Plan (AHRAP) through the lens of Upendra Baxi's germinal theory on the emergence in our time of a ‘trade-related, market-friendly human rights’ (TREMF) thesis that is challenging the specific understandings of ‘people-centric’ human rights that are predicated in the letter and spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDH). Baxi contends, instead, that the dominant strands of the contemporary understandings of human rights are – for the most part – designed to protect the interests of global capital. That said, human rights frameworks in low-income countries need to be studied with a view to what they say and don't say about global capital. Despite its attempt to facilitate a progressive realisation of human rights in Africa, the AHRAP does not rise far enough above the TREMF paradigm to re-locate itself within the UDH one. This is due to the AHRAP not adequately theorising and analysing the role of capital in the (non)realisation of human rights in Africa. By allowing trade and market practices to slip to a significant extent beyond its purview, the AHRAP privileges – to a significant degree – the needs/interests of capital over the human rights of ordinary Africans. That is, the victims of the excesses of capital in Africa are reincarnated in the AHRAP document by the fact of their exclusion from it.

Keywords

Africahuman rightsthe African Human Rights Action Planglobal capitalvictimsabsencepresenceexclusions
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 58 , Issue 4 , December 2020 , pp. 579 - 600
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The authors wish to express their gratitude to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for the short-term ‘SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant’ that funded the larger study on which this article is based; and express their appreciation to the Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, Toronto, Canada, the Nathanson Centre for Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security of the same university, and the Faculty of Law of the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada, for additional funding that helped make the project possible. The authors are also grateful to Kiana Blake, Jake Okechukwu Effoduh, Feyisayo Oni, Akosua Phebih-Serwah and Rahina Zarma, for their excellent assistance in the research and other project activities on which this article is grounded.

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