Human Rights
Human rights are norms that aspire to protect all people everywhere from severe political, legal, and social abuses. The philosophy of human rights addresses questions about the existence, content, nature, universality, justification, and legal status of human rights. The strong claims often made on behalf of human rights (for example, that they are universal, inalienable, or exist independently of legal enactment as justified moral norms) have frequently provoked skeptical doubts and countering philosophical defenses (on these critiques see Lacrois and Pranchere 2018, Mutua, 2008). Reflection on these doubts and the responses that can be made to them has become a sub-field of political and legal philosophy with a very substantial literature.
The origins of human rights may be found both in Greek philosophy and the various world religions. In the Age of Enlightenment (18th century) the concept of human rights emerged as an explicit category. Man/woman came to be seen as an autonomous individual, endowed by nature with certain inalienable fundamental rights that could be invoked against a government and should be safeguarded by it. Human rights were henceforth seen as elementary preconditions for an existence worthy of human dignity.
Before this period, several charters codifying rights and freedoms had been drawn up constituting important steps towards the idea of human rights. During the 6th Century, the Achaemenid Persian Empire of ancient Iran established unprecedented principles of human rights. Cyrus the Great (576 or 590 BC – 530 BC) issued the Cyrus cylinder which declared that citizens of the empire would be allowed to practice their religious beliefs freely and also abolished slavery. The next generation of human rights documents were the Magna Charta Libertatum of 1215, the Golden Bull of Hungary (1222), the Danish Erik Klipping’s Håndfaestning of 1282, the Joyeuse Entrée of 1356 in Brabant (Brussels), theUnion of Utrecht of 1579 (The Netherlands) and the English Bill of Rights of 1689. These documents specified rights which could be claimed in the light of particular circumstances (e.g., threats to the freedom of religion), but they did not yet contain an all-embracing philosophical concept of individual liberty. Freedoms were often seen as rights conferred upon individuals or groups by virtue of their rank or status.
In the centuries after the Middle Ages, the concept of liberty became gradually separated from status and came to be seen not as a privilege but as a right of all human beings. Spanish theologists and jurists played a prominent role in this context. Among the former, the work of Francisco de Vitoria (1486-1546) and Bartolomé de las Casas (1474-1566) should be highlighted. These two men laid the (doctrinal) foundation for the recognition of freedom and dignity of all humans by defending the personal rights of the indigenous peoples inhabiting the territories colonised by the Spanish Crown.
The Enlightenment was decisive in the development of human rights concepts. The ideas of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), one of the fathers of modern international law, of Samuel von Pufendorf (1632-1694), and of John Locke (1632-1704) attracted much interest in Europe in the 18th century. Locke, for instance, developed a comprehensive concept of natural rights; his list of rights consisting of life, liberty and property. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) elaborated the concept under which the sovereign derived his powers and the citizens their rights from a social contract. The term human rights appeared for the first time in the French Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen(1789).
The people of the British colonies in North America took the human rights theories to heart. The American Declaration of Independence of 4 July 1776 was based on the assumption that all human beings are equal. It also referred to certain inalienable rights, such as the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These ideas were also reflected in the Bill of Rights which was promulgated by the state of Virginia in the same year. The provisions of the Declaration of Independence were adopted by other American states, but they also found their way into the Bill of Rights of the American Constitution. The French Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen of 1789, as well as the French Constitution of 1793, reflected the emerging international theory of universal rights. Both the American and French Declarations were intended as systematic enumerations of these rights.
Development
The term “development” has various meanings to different people and can be explained in different contexts. For example, the development needs of a starving population must be different from those where there is sufficient nutrition (Sarkodie, and Strezov, 2019). Development has often been confused with “economic growth as measured solely in terms of annual increases in pre-capita income or gross national product, regardless of its distribution and the degree of people‟s participation in effective growth”. Seers (1972) asserted that “development means the conditions for realisation of the human personality. Its evaluation must therefore take into account three linked criteria: where there has been a reduction in (1) poverty, (2) unemployment, (3) inequality”. According to Abuselidze, (2019), development involves “An improvement qualitative, quantitative or both – in the use of available resources”. He also asserts that development does not refer to one particular perspective on social, political and economic betterment. Instead, it is a hybrid term for a myriad of strategies adopted for socioeconomic and environment transformation from current states to desired ones.
Development in Africa and human rights
Over decades now, Africa have been ranked by international Human Rights organizationas like Human Right Watch, Ammesty International and International Crimenial Court as a continent where human rights violations are at it apex especially islamic countries, the violation of women’s basic human rights are mostly done in the name of culture and religion. After the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 in which pursuit of equal rights for women through international law has been fair from reach. The principle says that everyone is free and equal in diginity and eveveryone is entitled to rights “without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex” was started in Articles 1 and 2 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, African Charter by the Organization of African Unity (now African Unity) in 1986, Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam by the Organization of the Islamic Conference in 1993. Anthropology as an academic discipline has embraced a predominantly ethical relativist stance toward the idea of human rights as a legitimate universal concern for all cultures. In the past years the rising prominence of women’s rights as human rights has challenged this point of view. Within the context of the global women’s human rights movement, feminist anthropologists are in the forefront of this challenge, striving to uphold anthropology’s important focus on cultural context, while at the same time paying deep concern for harmful pracetics against women, with female genital mutilation in African no exception, which may be argued to be morally objectionable outside of any given culture. “Human Rights” is a very difficult phrase to define. One’s idea of humanity varies in every culture especially in African societies; discrepancies are often found even within a singular culture.
The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights is an international human rights instrument that is intended to promote and protect human rights and basic freedoms in the African continent. This essay seeks to critically argue the position of human rights in Africa, it will demonstrate how human rights are violated in Africa and how no organization has made efforts to fight against the violation of human rights in Africa, it will also demonstrate how the organizations that claim to advocate against human rights violations use their power for self-enrichment and promotion of their own agenda under the name of protecting human rights. Human rights are rights that belong to every person, the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) are part of those organizations that have took the responsibility of protecting these rights, it will be established how they have failed to fulfill this purpose.
The UN have been very controversial to their purposes which among them is to “maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace. A proper way to maintain peace is to prevent the violation of human rights, the courts at national and provincial levels have done a good job of protecting the rights of the individuals, however, there are certain individuals that seem to be above the law, those are the rich and high profile people which are responsible for gross violation of human rights and international crimes such people cannot be trialed in ordinary courts and they hold on to their positions in fear knowing that if they are removed from office they may be prosecuted. These are the same people in high positions in the organizations against the violation of human rights.
Poverty in Africa Has one ever thought about all the poverty that goes on around the world? From killings to diseases to starvation, there are plenty of factors that cause poverty to occur. Africa has one of the highest poverty rates in the world, considering that they are also one of the poorest countries in the world. It is not there that they live in poverty, it is their economy and environment, Africa is a country living in extreme poverty. Extreme poverty is defined as living on $1.25 or less a day. 414 million people and counting were living in extreme poverty in sub-saharan Africa.
Water scarcity affects nearly 300 million Africans (about 38 percent of the population). They also claim at least 6,000 lives per year. Without water, Africans are not guaranteed a steady food supply, since farmers cannot raise crops or livestock. This means that they resort to using unclean water to drink and farm. Illnesses caused by unclean water and sanitation kill about 4,000 children every day. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 43% of the children drink unclean. About one in five never live to see their fifth birthday (Zeaman 17-19,86-89). Poverty in Africa results in more than 500 million people suffering from waterborne diseases. More than 50 percent of Africans actually have a water-related illness like cholera. Each year, Sub-Saharan Africa misses out on about $30 billion as productivity due to water and sanitation problems (Packtor web). The government has made efforts to warn local people of the dangers of drinking unclean water. It could be contaminated with sewage or tainted with industrial waste. Drinking the water that is contaminated by heavy metals can cause cancer, poisoning, and skin diseases. Even though the community has been warned about the water, they still use it. Most cannot afford to buy water so they have no other options and no free source of water is available where they live.
Economic manipulation and human rights
The standard of human rights protection in Africa is not yet high because of corrupt leaders that are supposed to be representing and acting in the interests of the people instead they are responsible for money laundering and fraud which I consider as a crime to humanity because people in Africa are starving, not because of lacking necessary resources but because the monies that should be helping the people are in the pockets of the corrupt leaders and politicians. The people of Equatorial Guinea live in poverty, despite vast oil revenues. In July 2004, a U.S. Senate report found that huge sums of money had passed through Riggs Bank in the United States from Equatorial Guinea. $26 million was diverted by President Obiang from Riggs to an account in Spain of a shell company owned by him. It appears that a large portion of this money was then used to buy villas in Spain for members of his family. The case is still under investigation and it is very likely that no one will be arrested because human rights law does not apply to rich people in Africa. “The Africa Economic outlook 2012, published by the African Development Bank, shows that African states as a whole lost $18.4bn annually between 1970 and 2008 as a result of capital flight, most of it from large scale corruption, thus putting ‘strain on human development’. The report suggested that if the capital had been reinvested in Africa with the same level of productivity, poverty levels would have been cut by 4 to 6 per cent every year between 2000 and 2008. The human rights are violated every day and the AU or the UN can only help by sending peacekeepers when there is no peace to be kept, people die of poverty every day. The life taken away by poverty is more than that of the civil war or natural disasters hence corruption is the largest human rights violation. Poverty rates are high therefore life expectancy is low, and Africans die young.
Africans are exploited by the companies and when they protest they are killed by the police who are supposed to be protecting the people. No organization have been able to enforce human rights because those responsible of human rights violations are too powerful. “While major human rights organizations, like Amnesty International, have in recent decades adopted economic, social, and cultural rights as part of their mission, their methods, such as post-hoc protest, diplomacy, and reporting (naming, shaming, and framing) are no match for the global exploitation by corporations and national elites. The huge lack of basic services in Africa is because the resources are owned by the few, people have little or no access to hospitals, higher education is expensive and there is no for the people because most of the land is occupied by things of no important as a golf course which consume the scarce water with irrigation. The people who benefit from capital flight are the elites who have the power to unlawfully appropriate and transfer resources abroad. Almost all those engaging in capital flight in Africa are among the 10% richest segment of the population. Even after gaining independence, African leaders have become dependent on the superpowers or their former colonialists and the net effect is that the African agenda is sacrificed to the detriment of the people and sadly the African Union appears to be helpless in this situation.
Somalia’s federal government received international praise for its planned economic reforms, including its national development but it made little progress with security and judicial reforms while conflict-related abuses, insecurity, and the humanitarian crisis took a heavy toll on civilians.
All parties to the conflict committed violations of international humanitarian law, some amounting to war crimes. The militant group Al-Shabab conducted indiscriminate and targeted attacks on civilians and forcibly recruited children. Inter-clan and intra-security force violence killed, injured and displaced civilians, as did sporadic military operations against Al-Shabab by Somali government forces, African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) troops, and other foreign forces.
References
Abuselidze, G., 2019. Modern challenges of monetary policy strategies: inflation and devaluation influence on economic development of the country. Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 18(4), pp.1-10.
Lacroix, J. and Pranchère, J.Y., 2018. Human rights on trial: A genealogy of the critique of human rights. Human Rights in History.
Sarkodie, S.A. and Strezov, V., 2019. Effect of foreign direct investments, economic development and energy consumption on greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries. Science of the Total Environment, 646, pp.862-871.
Seers, D., 1972. AID: what types of government should be refused what types of aid?.
Swadener, B.B. and Mutua, K., 2008. Deconstructing the global postcolonial. Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies, pp.31-43.
