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International Imposition Vs. Domestic Assimilation: The Criminalization Of Female Genital Cutting In Ghana, Anna Amma Sallah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The unassailable continuity of female genital cutting (FGC) despite its criminalization and the salience wielded over the past few decades stokes thoughts about what is missing—signifying the need to examine present legal mechanisms pertinent to FGC critically. The current research fails to consider the full breadth of the entanglement of law and culture relating to FGC, which is important because where the change of behavior is the objective of the law, social and legal norms must interact. By relying on the basis that FGC is not a normative crime but a deeply rooted cultural practice, I argue that international law …

The Effect Of Foreign Aid On Political Violence: Learning From Case Studies Of Nigeria And Sierra Leone, Charlotte Rohrer

Politics Honors Papers

Policymakers in OECD countries regularly cite reducing political violence as a fundamental purpose of foreign aid. For example, countries such as Pakistan and Iraq have received considerable amounts of aid meant to address the root causes of political violence. This project analyzes quantitative and qualitative evidence to assess whether foreign aid can reduce political violence. The quantitative and qualitative analyses study Boko Haram in Nigeria and the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone to focus on regional and country-wide political violence. The study further focuses on aid projects in Sierra Leone and Nigeria as a means to reduce or curb …

Social Justice And Human Rights In Education Policy Discourse: Assessing Nelson Mandela's Legacy, Abrehet Gebremedhin, Devin Joshi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Twenty years after South Africa's democratisation, Nelson Mandela's passing has prompted scholars to examine his legacy in various domains. Here we take a look at his legacy in education discourse. Tracing Mandela's thoughts and pronouncements on education we find two major emphases: a view of education as a practical means to economic development, and education as a means to social justice, human rights, and democracy. Assessing the legacy of these twin emphases, we conducted qualitative and quantitative content analysis of turning point documents in education policy and annual reports from the respective South African ministries of education over the last …

Leaving A Legacy, Walter Lotze

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The ongoing conflict in Somalia, and the complexities that come with finding lasting solutions to a conflict that has raged for decades now, continue to perplex the international community. While a range of previously tried and tested approaches to conflict management are being applied, it is becoming apparent that the international toolkit for responding to conflict situations of such complexity is extremely limited. Indeed, as one international conference after another on Somalia takes place, compacts are signed and funding windows established, old frameworks are abandoned and new ones are forged, and roadmap after roadmap pave the way for further engagement, …

Somali Battlegrounds: On Interest And Accountability, Ines Mzali

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In the wake of the latest and deadliest of Al-Shabab's attacks in Kenya since Kenyan troops entered Somalia in October 2011, Ben Rawlence reiterates the question raised anew by each attack: "What is Kenya doing in Somalia and is it worth the price?" The question leads him to explore the contradiction between the official objectives of the mission and Kenya's particular motivations to launch an offensive of its own. This problematic discrepancy also draws attention to the question of accountability when violations of international humanitarian law have occurred in the context of a military operation by a neighboring country and …

The Hegemony Of English In South African Education, Kelsey E. Figone

Scripps Senior Theses

The South African Constitution recognizes 11 official languages and protects an individual’s right to use their mother-tongue freely. Despite this recognition, the majority of South African schools use English as the language of learning and teaching (LOLT). Learning in English is a struggle for many students who speak indigenous African languages, rather than English, as a mother-tongue, and the educational system is failing its students. This perpetuates inequality between different South African communities in a way that has roots in the divisions of South Africa’s past. An examination of the power of language and South Africa’s experience with colonialism and …

April Roundtable: Responsibility To Protect And Human Rights Protection In The Ivory Coast, Introduction, Claudia Fuentes

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

Article under review: “The Case for Intervention in the Ivory Coast” by Corinne Dufka. Foreign Policy. March 25 2011.

Pandora’S Box Of Humanitarian Intervention, Edzia Carvalho

Human Rights & Human Welfare

“The Case for Intervention in the Ivory Coast” reminded me of the discussion that my undergraduate students had during the previous academic term on the conundrums surrounding humanitarian intervention. They innately responded to the intense suffering of individuals and groups facing gross human rights violations and initially argued that inaction in the face of suffering cannot be justified on any grounds. However, with their international relations hats on, many of them soon realized that putting an end to such a state of affairs is not as easy or straightforward as they had hoped.

A Structural Solution To Africa’S Wayward Presidents, Devin K. Joshi

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The current crisis in the Ivory Coast unfortunately resembles a number of crises in Western and Central Africa over the last few decades. Whereas the international community has generally been more willing to intervene in Europe and the Middle East, there has been a tendency to “wait and watch” while humanitarian crises unfold in middle Africa. In the last several years, as in the Ivory Coast right now, however, global awareness of the brutality of such crises has expanded tremendously.

Double Standards Demystified, Jonas Claes

Human Rights & Human Welfare

At the time Ms. Corinne Dufka’s op-Ed about the crisis in Côte D’Ivoire appeared, few would have predicted that three days later UN troops, with the support of the French military, would act forcefully to protect civilians and tip the balance in favor of the fighters loyal to Alassane Ouattara, eventually leading to the arrest of Laurent Gbagbo. The odds were not favoring this scenario.

We Do Indeed Reap What We Sow, Walter Lotze

Human Rights & Human Welfare

When violence first broke out in Tunisia in January 2011, few observers would have predicted that waves of unrest would engulf North Africa and the Arab world. When demonstrations swiftly spread to Algeria, Sudan, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Jordan, observers hastened to place bets on which regime would be the next to fall. That Hosni Mubarak would be felled next came perhaps as no surprise; Egypt had for years been on a knife’s edge, liberalizing and modernizing society while closing all space for political and social participation. Most analysts then turned their attention to Sudan, Yemen, and Bahrain, predicting that …

March Roundtable: Libya And The Responsibility To Protect, Introduction, Claudia Fuentes

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

Article under review: “It’s Time to Intervene” by Shadi Hamid. Slate. February 23 2011.

Feminism And Democracy, Louis Edgar Esparza

Human Rights & Human Welfare

After work on December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks walked onto a bus that was to take her home that night. She ended up on a trip to jail instead, for refusing to give her seat to a white passenger. The event triggered resistance to bus segregation, the founding of the Montgomery Improvement Association, and the election of the then-unknown Dr. Martin Luther King as its leader. The success of the campaign is an integral battle in our historical retellings of the US African American Civil Rights Movement. Fewer recount the sexual harassment against black women by white …

Is It Really Time To Intervene In Libya?, Christina Cerna

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Shadi Hamid, in “It’s Time to Intervene,” suggests that the international community—specifically, the United States, the United Nations, and NATO—must intervene in Libya because Muammar Gaddafi has declared that he is ready and willing to slaughter his own people if his survival depends on it. The author considered Gaddafi’s speech otherwise “bizarre” and “incoherent.”

I Will Survive, Robert Funk

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Academics do not often quote 70s disco tunes. At least not in print. But if there is one thing that has been striking about the events in Libya in recent weeks—and indeed looking back over decades—it is the sheer ability of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to survive. He is, perhaps with Fidel Castro, the world’s greatest survivor. He has indeed learned how to carry on.

Abeyance And Spontaneity In Tunisia, Louis Edgar Esparza

Human Rights & Human Welfare

On August 16, 1819, tens of thousands of workers gathered in what is now St. Peter’s Square in Manchester to demand suffrage. Entire families, parishes, and townships assembled, fueled by increasing commodity prices and political disenfranchisement. They had spread the word from town to town, and from church to church, that this previously banned meeting was indeed to occur. It was the culmination of months of agitation on the part of common people to achieve economic and political reform. The government responded violently to the challenge of its authority, as governments so often do, leading to a score of deaths …

February Roundtable: The Arab Revolutions And Human Rights, Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The Failure of Governance in the Arab World” by Simon Tisdall. The Guardian. January 11 2011.

A Little Respect, Please, Christina Cerna

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Simon Tisdall suggests that last month, when Mohammed Bouazizi (twenty-six years old), “an unemployed graduate, set himself on fire outside a government building in protest at police harassment,” his act became the “rallying cause for Tunisia’s disaffected legions of unemployed students, impoverished workers, trade unionists, lawyers and human rights activists.” The reaction to his act of self-immolation and death on January 4th led to the flight of President Ben Ali ten days later to Saudi Arabia and to the end of Ali's twenty-three-year rule of Tunisia. Time reported the event as follows: “When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight on Dec. …

Those Pesky Winds Of Change..., Walter Lotze

Human Rights & Human Welfare

When a police officer slapped a fruit seller by the name of Mohammed Bouazizi in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, nobody could have anticipated that a revolution had commenced. Bouazizi, a twenty-six-year-old computer science graduate unable to find work, had resorted to selling fruit from a street cart in an attempt to support himself and his seven siblings. Slapped by the police officer and ordered to pack up his goods, Bouazizi himself snapped. He marched to the local governor’s office and demanded an appointment, threatening to set himself alight if the governor did not meet with him. In frustration, …

He's Our Son Of A Bitch, Robert Funk

Human Rights & Human Welfare

It is said that Franklin Delano Roosevelt defended the US tendency to support dictators by remarking, “He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch.” The recent events in Tunisia and Egypt indicate that almost seventy years later, this unfortunate phrase seems to continue to guide US foreign policy.

The Irony Of Refuge: Gender-Based Violence Against Female Refugees In Africa, Liz Miller

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The Sudanese soldiers and the Janjawid invaded her village. When she tried to escape, they gang-raped her. At that time, she was eight months pregnant and described giving birth to a dead baby afterward and being very sick. She could not make it with her group to the border to flee to Chad so she had to walk alone. Once she got to Chad, she was raped by a Chadian soldier outside of the camp and became pregnant. Afterwards, her husband divorced her, and she now lives with the stigma of being a rape victim. She has been expelled from …

Security Now: Addressing The Needs Of Darfur’S Children, Nicole Judd

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In the Darfur region of Sudan, over 2.3 million children have been affected by the ongoing genocide (UNICEF 2008). Unlike their adult counterparts, children are impacted more severely by the consequences of warfare as they are undergoing a fragile developmental process. While each one of the affected children has had their basic human rights violated in some form, the narrative of trauma differs between groups. Sexually-exploited girls, boy soldiers, unaccompanied children, and those who remain in under-resourced camps have experienced the protracted violence in unique ways. To mitigate the effects of war, each group should receive individualized humanitarian assistance as …

Kimberly Lanegran On Child Soldiers: Sierra Leone’S Revolutionary United Front. By Myriam Denov. Cambridge, Uk: Cambridge University Press. 2010. 234 Pp., Kimberly Lanegran

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Child Soldiers: Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front. By Myriam Denov. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 2010. 234 pp.

Bashir And The Icc, Kurt Mills

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Nesrine Malik argues that the International Criminal Court (ICC) made a mistake when it declared that it might charge Omar al Bashir with genocide, in addition to the existing charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. She argues that the court’s ruling will contribute to Bashir's propaganda efforts and that the current charges have had no appreciable effect. Given the extreme duplicity of Bashir and the other crimes he has quite clearly committed, it is unclear how the genocide charge would make a big difference.

Can The Icc Ever Get It Right?, Richard Burchill

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Nesrine Malik makes clear with her title, “The ICC’s Blunder on Sudan,” that something has gone amiss with the efforts of Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo to ensure the ICC statute is applied to those circumstances it was meant to address. But why is something amiss in this situation? The Prosecutor has a mandate and the legal regime for the ICC is relatively clear (at least procedurally); the crimes it covers can always be debated, but there is a degree of clarity present as to what acts are addressed; so what has gone wrong? The difficulty lies in expectations about justice and …

Politics And The Law: Enforcing Judicial Integrity, Anna Talbot

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The ruling by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in early February concerning the arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir provoked controversy. The role of the Court has been called into question, with Nesrine Malik’s piece surmising that the ruling has shown that the Court is out of touch with political reality. She argues that the decision plays into the hands of authorities who are using it to their own political ends; that the charge of genocide is unjustified; and that the practicalities of enforcement undermine the Court.

Confronting The Politics And Law Behind Battles Over The Icc’S Bashir Indictment, Anthony Chase

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Nesrine Malik points in the wrong direction in arguing that charges of genocide embarrass the ICC more than they do Omar al-Bashir. The embarrassment here should come from those, such as Malik, who snidely downplay the level of war crimes committed in Darfur, who discuss genocide as if it is a cultural rather than political matter (does Malik seriously think genocide ever has anything to do with a country’s cultural traditions, as she says in defending Sudan?), or who naively give credence to predictable political push-back from Sudan and its allies. The ICC faces serious legal and political obstacles, some …

March Roundtable: Icc And Darfur Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The ICC's Blunder on Sudan” by Nesrine Malik. The Guardian. February 4, 2010.

The Loss Of Egypt’S Children, Cindy Ragab

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Under the fierce rays of the desert sun, in the heat of the summer, young children are forced to remove pests from cotton crops for eleven hours per day, search for recyclable goods among animals and the pungent stench of city dumps, and are sold to elderly male tourists through temporary marriages by their parents. This is the hideous reality for millions of child laborers in Egypt. Child labor is a manifestation of the pains of extreme poverty on the world’s most vulnerable population. Childhood is lost. Children are forced to take on responsibilities that in normal circumstances push adults …

Amazigh Legitimacy Through Language In Morocco, Sarah R. Fischer

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Contemporary Morocco rests at a geographic and developmental crossroads. Uniquely positioned on the Northwestern tip of Africa, Morocco is a short distance away from continental Europe, cradled between North African tradition and identity, and Western embrace. The landscape is varied: craggy mountains trail into desert oases; cobbled streets of the medina anchor the urban centers; mud homes dot the rural countryside. Obscured from the outside observer, behind the walls of the Imperial cities and between the footpaths of village olive groves, Morocco’s rich and diverse Arab and Amazigh cultures and languages circle one another in a contested dance. Morocco’s identity …