scholarly journals Self-determining Multiculturalism

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-66
Author(s):  
Laine Schultz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Top Down ◽  
First Peoples ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

The burgeoning human rights discourse of the twentieth century inspired new attention to the location of minority groups within the nation-state and their experiences of violence, discrimination and inequality. The result has been attempts by the nation to address the diversity of its population through the recognition of cultural difference. Attending to two particular rights claims—those of Indigenous self-determination and multiculturalism—we can find a tendency toward subsuming the former within those of the latter. This is a move that results from a top-down approach to the recognition of difference, reproducing colonialist priorities and jurisprudence, and significantly undermining the goals and meanings of Indigenous self-determination. By contrast, when self-determination is approached from the bottom-up, we can gain new perspectives on the meanings of this Indigenous right, expanded to encompass a range of relationships, all crucially built in response to Indigenous identities as First Peoples.

Self-Determination, Human Rights, and the Nation-State

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 443-484
Author(s):  
Gaetano Pentassuglia
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Nation State ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
General Process ◽  
Cultural Minority ◽  
The Right

Abstract In this article I examine selective dimensions of the nexus among the right to self-determination, human rights, and the ‘nation-state’ as they relate to claims made by certain ethno-cultural minority groups. I first discuss some conceptual extensions of ‘national’ claims and their underlying relation to international law and state sovereignty. Then, I critique elements of ‘national’ self-determination that are supposedly constitutive of the law of self-determination, including arguments about sub-national groups as ‘peoples’, and discuss some alternative approaches to the role of international law vis-à-vis this sort of claims. Finally, I argue that international human rights law can offer a synthesis of the above nexus insofar as it works, not so much as a platform for accepting or rejecting seemingly ‘absolute’ rights or solely enabling legal-institutional ad hocism, but rather as a general process-based framework for assessing group- related pathologies that are (directly or indirectly) of international law’s own making.

Empathetic British feminists at the crossroads of colonialism and self-determination

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 84-97
Author(s):  
Rebecca Cardone
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Transnational Activism ◽  
Global Integration ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Race And Class

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore women’s resistance to the religion of civilising missions abroad through empathetic feminism. Design/methodology/approach Conceptually, this paper explores three thematic tools for transnational activism in the interwar period: empathy for silent history, intersectionality of race and class, and empowerment through advocacy within power structures. With the theoretical backdrop of Winifred Holtby’s activism inspired by the philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft, this research compares the political involvement of Frances Emily Newton to Blanche Elizabeth Campbell Dugdale, and how their transnational activism contributed to post-colonial self-determination and the convolution of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict in the rise of the twentieth century nation-state. Findings These three feminists provided alternative narratives of human rights activism during the first wave of British feminism that both enabled transnational activism and planted seeds for empowering self-determination amidst colonial mandates and rising nationalism. Practical implications These women worked at the dovetail of colonialism and self-determination towards the twentieth century nation-state, and as the twenty-first century evolves with greater global integration and interconnectivity, imaginative insight in the transnational context evokes greater opportunities for empathy and compassion across intersectional identities, which in effect enables the mobilisation of positionality to confront structural violence perpetuating silenced voices. Originality/value By contextually evaluating transnational activism in a narrative of nuanced complexities, this research exudes opportunities for propagating universal human rights while maintaining the sensitivity to post-colonial sentiment for empowerment with the support of transnational networks.

scholarly journals The 2013 Elections in Zimbabwe: End of an Era for Human Rights Discourse?

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 99-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelias Ncube
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
The State ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Coalition Government ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Strained State ◽  
Civil And Political Rights ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Right ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This paper examines the implications of Zimbabwe's 2013 harmonised elections on the opposition's continued deployment of the rights-based discourse to make moral and political claims against and demands of the state. Since 2000, two polarising strands of the human rights discourse −1) the right to self-determination and 2) civil and political rights – were deployed by the state and the opposition, respectively, in order to challenge extant relations and structures of power. The acutely strained state–society relations in post-2000 Zimbabwe emanated from human rights violations by the state as it responded to challenges to its political power and legitimacy. However, the relative improvement in the human rights situation in the country since the 2009 coalition government came into office, and during and since the recently concluded peaceful 2013 elections – the flawed electoral process itself notwithstanding – suggests a need for alternative new ways to make moral and political demands of the state in the future.

Reasonable caning and the embrace of human rights in Ugandan prisons

Focaal ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 (68) ◽  
pp. 68-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomas Max Martin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Prison Staff ◽  
Prison Management ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

Ugandan prison staff both criticize and welcome human rights as a reform agenda that brings about insecurity as well as tangible improvements. In practice, human rights discourse is malleable enough for prison officers to cobble together a take on human rights that enables them to embrace the concept. The analysis of the emic notion of “reasonable caning” illustrates this malleability as staff concurrently take stands against inhumane violence and continue to legitimize caning while aligning with human rights. Human rights are locally negotiated, and it is argued that human rights reform cannot simply be analyzed as a submissive or opposing reaction to the top-down export of powerful global discourses. The embrace of human rights that unfolds in Ugandan prisons is rather a productive and multifaceted effort by prison officers to get purchase on legal technologies and reconceptualizations of prison management practices that affect their lives.

Religion, Repression, and Human Rights in Eritrea and the Diaspora

2014 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tricia Redeker Hepner
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Internal Dynamics ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Generational Conflicts ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

AbstractThis paper analyzes the logic of the Eritrean state’s repression of religious identities and institutions from a historical and transnational perspective. It argues that contemporary religious repression expresses cultural, political, and generational conflicts related to the internal dynamics of Eritrea’s postrevolutionary transition, the transnational configuration of the nation-state, and larger preoccupations with the pressures of globalization. A key proposition is that repression of religion is related to both the modernist secularism of the nationalist regime and the ways in which human rights discourse intersects simultaneously with northern interventionism and transnational diaspora opposition to the Eritrean regime. Analyzing the Eritrean case with respect to contemporary critical scholarship on the tensions and contradictions inherent in secularism and human rights discourse highlights how their emancipatory potentials can be co-opted by regimes of power.

Engaged Surrender in the Void: Post-Secularist “Human” Rights Discourse and Muslim Feminists [sic]

2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-151
Author(s):  
Emily Albrink Hartigan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Cultural Choice ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

“Human” rights discourse is inherently multicultural, and multicultural discourse is messy. The academese for that goes something like this: I am an “agnostic and ambivalent subject of a double, decentered multicultural choice” (see the following quotations) and my text comes from a minority stance in a “different context.”“[A]ffirmative multi-culturalism” can bring no such closure and composure to the subject of cultural choice. Its subjectivity is performatively constituted in the very tension that makes knowledge of cultural difference dense, conglomerative, and nondeliberative. What emerges is an agonistic and ambivalent subject of a double, decentered multicultural choice. (emphasis added)—Homi K. Bhabha

scholarly journals Disability and the Right to Have Rights

2007 ◽  
Vol 27 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobin Siebers
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Nation State ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
The Status ◽  
International Human ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Right ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

A major debate over human rights discourse concerns whether human rights should be guaranteed by the nation-state based on citizenship or whether they should be guaranteed internationally on the basis of the status of the rights-bearing person as human. This essay intervenes in this debate, via an analysis of Hannah Arendt's idea of the right to have rights, to argue that disability, as a critical indicator of universal human frailty, should provide the basis for international human rights.

Housing as a Basic Human Right: A Reflection on South Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mziwandile Sobantu ◽  
Nqobile Zulu ◽  
Ntandoyenkosi Maphosa
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Development Agenda ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This paper reflects on human rights in the post-apartheid South Africa housing context from a social development lens. The Constitution guarantees access to adequate housing as a basic human right, a prerequisite for the optimum development of individuals, families and communities. Without the other related socio-economic rights, the provision of access to housing is limited in its service delivery. We argue that housing rights are inseparable from the broader human rights discourse and social development endeavours underway in the country. While government has made much progress through the Reconstruction and Development Programme, the reality of informal settlements and backyard shacks continues to undermine the human rights prospects of the urban poor. Forced evictions undermine some poor citizens’ human rights leading courts to play an active role in enforcing housing and human rights through establishing a jurisprudence that invariably advances a social development agenda. The authors argue that the post-1994 government needs to galvanise the citizenship of the urban poor through development-oriented housing delivery.

The Internationalization Of Human Rights And The Importance Of Normative Dialogues Between International And National Courts

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Mariane Morato Stival ◽  
Marcos André Ribeiro ◽  
Daniel Gonçalves Mendes da Costa
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
National Courts ◽  
European Court ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Different Characteristics ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This article intends to analyze in the context of the complexity of the process of internationalization of human rights, the definitions and tensions between cultural universalism and relativism, the essence of human rights discourse, its basic norms and an analysis of the normative dialogues in case decisions involving violations of human rights in international tribunals such as the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and national courts. The well-established dialogue between courts can bring convergences closer together and remove differences of opinion on human rights protection. A new dynamic can occur through a complementarity of one court with respect to the other, even with the different characteristics between the legal orders.

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