From bulldozing to housing rights: reducing vulnerability and improving health in African slums

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 64-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katia S. Mohindra ◽  
Ted Schrecker
Keyword(s):  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
Economic Globalization ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Multiple Risks ◽  
Slum Dwellers ◽  
Housing Rights ◽  
Important Approach ◽  
Sub Saharan

Forced evictions heighten vulnerability among slum dwellers who already face multiple risks of ill health. They constitute a well-documented violation of economic and social rights and are reaching epidemic proportions in sub-Saharan Africa as economic globalization creates and strengthens incentives for forced evictions. We describe evictions in the slums of four African metropolitan areas: Accra (Ghana), Lagos (Nigeria), Luanda (Angola) and Nairobi (Kenya). We survey diverse strategies used in responding to forced evictions and outline the challenges and barriers encountered. We conclude that the international human rights framework offers an important approach for protecting the health of vulnerable populations.

Accountability

2020 ◽  
pp. 258-286
Author(s):  
Aryeh Neier
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals ◽  
Military Regimes ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
International Human ◽  
Sub Saharan

This chapter focuses on the major goal of the international human rights movement has been in securing accountability for grave abuses. It talks about “truth commissions” in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, several countries of Asia, Morocco, and Canada, which deals with abuses against the country's indigenous population. It also highlights the establishment of several international criminal tribunals in order to prosecute and punish those accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The chapter explores accountability, which has become a central concern of the international human rights movement for the recognition or official acknowledgment of the suffering of victims of human rights abuses. It also analyzes the purpose of deniability, which made it possible for military regimes in that commit abuses to maintain a facadeof legality.

Regulation of Sexuality in the Global South

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle L. Dion
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
Global South ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Lgbt Rights ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Regional Leaders

Government regulation of sexuality includes prohibitions on same-sex intimacy, formation of families, and related rights of LGBT+ people due to their sexual orientation or gender identities. Countries in the Global South tend to lag behind those in the Global North in the recognition of LGBT+ rights, which overall tend to expand incrementally over time in response to LGBT+ activism, diffusion of international norms, and national economic, political and social context. Basic civil rights, including legalization of same-sex intimacy and marriage, are often a necessary precondition for LGBT+ access to the political right to organize and mobilize as an interest group as well as other social rights, such as health care and parental rights. In the developing world, Argentina and South Africa have been regional leaders in LGBT+ rights, and Latin America countries have tended to broaden protections earlier than countries at similar levels of development in Sub-Saharan Africa or Asia. Overall, in the early 21st century, the landscape of LGBT+ civil rights changed rapidly, while some political and social rights still lag behind.

Politicizing Poverty

2021 ◽  
pp. 108-149
Author(s):  
Monique Deveaux
Keyword(s):  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Urban Slum ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Collective Consciousness ◽  
Political Consciousness ◽  
Founding Member ◽  
Slum Dwellers ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
La Via Campesina

This chapter explains how poor-led political activism politicizes public discourse about poverty, as well as fosters the critical, political consciousness of people living in poverty. It shows how poor-led organizations and movements harness this collective consciousness to develop and advance more radical, pro-poor policies for poverty reduction and development. The chapter spotlights the work of urban slum dweller political mobilizations in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, especially Slum Dwellers International (SDI) and some of its founding member-groups; the piqueteros workers’ movement in Argentina; the landless rural movements in Latin America, particularly the MST in Brazil, its global spinoff, La Vía Campesina, and the rural empowerment group, Nijera Kori, in Bangladesh. These examples serve to show how poor groups politicize poverty both within public discourse and in the eyes of members of poor communities.

scholarly journals The African State in a Wake of Neoliberal Globalization: A Cog in a Wheel or a Wheel in a Cog

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. p32
Author(s):  
Kizito Michael George
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
African State ◽  
Economic Globalization ◽  
The State ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Political Globalization

This paper situates the Sub-Saharan African state amidst the conflictual interface between the forces of political (Note 1) and economic globalization (Note 2) that have been ushered in the state milieu by neo-liberalism (Note 3). The paper argues that states are situated in an imperialistic globalization with capitalistic economic extirpation as central concern and social justice as a peripheral one. This categorically explicates the persistence of globalised economies and localized oppressive state apparatuses, ideologies and practices. The paper also contends that the forces of economic globalization have superimposed the cultural mantra in the Sub-Saharan Africa state milieu, rendering it virtually impossible to pursue a Rights Based Approach to Development (RBAD). The apparent assault by this globalization from above (economic globalization), continues almost unabated due to absence of an afro centric globalization from below to mitigate the homogenizing effects of economic globalization. Worse still, the inability of political globalization to check the daunting implications of economic globalization using a human rights antidote and the consequent slumber of the glocalisation dialectic in the African state locale explicate the problematic of Africa in the wake of erosion from above (global pillage) and devolution from below.

scholarly journals The Vulnerability of Rice Value Chains in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Review

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fanen Terdoo ◽  
Giuseppe Feola
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Economic Globalization ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Development Policies ◽  
The Face ◽  
Sub Saharan

Abstract: Rice is one of the most important food crops in sub-Saharan Africa. Climate change, variability, and economic globalization threaten to disrupt rice value chains across the subcontinent, undermining their important role in economic development, food security, and poverty reduction. This paper maps existing research on the vulnerability of rice value chains, synthesizes the evidence and the risks posed by climate change and economic globalization, and discusses agriculture and rural development policies and their relevance for the vulnerability of rice value chains in sub-Saharan Africa. Important avenues for future research are identified. These include the impacts of multiple, simultaneous pressures on rice value chains, the effects of climate change and variability on parts of the value chain other than production, and the forms and extent to which different development policies hinder or enhance the resilience of rice value chains in the face of climatic and other pressures.

Geographies of sexualities in sub-Saharan Africa: Positioning and critically engaging with international human rights and related ascendant discourses

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 683-703 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Global South ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Systematic Evaluation ◽  
Future Research ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
International Human ◽  
Sub Saharan

Significant opportunities exist to examine new ways of approaching geographies of sexualities in the Global South. This article argues a key way to consider this is via a systematic evaluation of diverse impacts in the Global South of very different internationally-driven processes designed to address local LGBT needs. Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa and drawing on and reviewing a range of disciplinary perspectives, this article offers a conceptualization and series of future research questions regarding the relational and diverse impacts of different internationally-driven processes. These concerns support existing geographies of sexualities interests including the interfaces between sexuality, intersectionality and space.

State Failure and Challenges to Democratization in Africa

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 359-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Herbst
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Important Approach ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Cross National

Robert H. Bates's new book When Things Fell Apart seeks to make a contribution in two different areas. Explicitly, it joins a large literature on why state institutions collapsed in sub-Saharan Africa, especially why leaders drove one economy after the next into the ground. Less emphatically stated but clear enough from the book's content and its structure is an important contribution to political science's “culture wars” over the use of different types of evidence, especially the sometimes competing claims for the primacy of country knowledge, game-theoretic modeling, and large cross-national data sets. In particular, Bates uses a deductive approach, where game-theoretic approaches are married to national outcomes through a deep immersion in the literature and intuition (a concept he clearly seeks to rehabilitate) and then tested by the use of a significant and original database that is nonetheless relegated to an appendix. This is a particularly important approach because no one would accuse Bates of being at all hostile to large-scale quantitative analysis. Indeed, the significant data collection at Harvard's Africa Research Program (http://africa.gov.harvard.edu), which he helped found, is a service to the discipline.

scholarly journals Demand Supply Gap in Urban Water Supply and Sanitary Services- A Case Study of Mangalore City Corporation Area

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-124
Author(s):  
Nagendra ◽  
Suresh
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Double Burden ◽  
Household Level ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Poor Households ◽  
Slum Dwellers ◽  
Access To Water ◽  
Political Choices ◽  
Sub Saharan

Today, some 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitations. These twin deficits were rooted in institutions and political choices, not in water’s availability. Household water requirements represent a tiny fraction of water use, usually less than 5% of the total, but there is tremendous inequality in access to clean water and to sanitation at a household level. In high-income areas of cities in Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa people enjoy access to several hundred litres of water a day delivered into their homes at low prices by public utilities. Meanwhile, slum dwellers and poor households in rural areas of the same countries have access to much less than the 20 litres of water a day per person required to meet the most basic human needs. Women and young girls carry a double burden of disadvantage, since they are the ones who sacrifice their time and their education to collect water.

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