DDR: Human Rights and the Idea of Africa: An Ethnography of International Legal Practice

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

This project examines the presence of ideas of universalism and cultural relativism in the African human rights system. Using ethnographic methods, including interviews and participant observation, and analysis of the case law of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, the project addresses individuals' roles and resources in the African human rights system. It investigates how individuals' backgrounds and personal attributes impact their views of the cultural characteristics of the African human rights system, and examines the extent to which human rights are a part of the formation of an African collective identity. This project adds to current research on human rights institutions, the internationalization of legal practice, and the anthropology of law. The project will have a broader impact by analyzing the role of human rights law in a changing geopolitical landscape, including the use of human rights to solve conflicts, the deployment of rights in the articulation of supranational collective identities, and human rights as an aspect of the emergence of global constitutionalism. It also contributes to socio-legal studies on human rights in Africa, and offers the existing African human rights structure a social scientific assessment of its procedures.