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SUMMARY:CGHR Research Group: The African Commission on Human and Peoples' 
 Rights and the African Fingerprint: An ethnographic re-visitation -  Nikla
 s Hultin\, University of Cambridge
DTSTART:20140203T130000Z
DTEND:20140203T140000Z
UID:TALK49570@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Gabriela Martinez
DESCRIPTION:The CGHR Research Group is a forum for graduate students and e
 arly-career researchers from any department and disciplinary background re
 searching issues of governance and human rights in the global\, regional\,
  and national contexts.\n\n*Abstract*\nSince its inception\, the African C
 harter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (and the African Commission) has bee
 n discussed by legal scholars as embodying what Makau wa Mutua has referre
 d to as an “African fingerprint.” Legal scholars have pointed to speci
 fic features of the African Charter such as the featuring third generation
  rights alongside first and second generation rights\, the emphasis on ami
 cable resolution and inclusiveness\, as evidence of this fingerprint. Furt
 hermore\, the Charter and its various preparatory documents also include n
 umerous discussions of African heritage\, African values\, and African civ
 ilisation. This sets the African Commission apart from the other two regio
 nal systems in that it seeks to combine a distinctively African approach t
 o human rights with the latter’s putative universalism. Indeed\, in a mu
 ch cited speech at one of the preparatory meetings of the African Charter\
 , Leopold Senghor (then the president of Senegal) tasked the delegates to 
 maintain the universal nature of human rights while at the same time incor
 porating African heritage.\n\nDrawing on the “new” anthropology of hum
 an rights that has developed since the early 2000s in which the “culture
  of human rights” has been a central question\, this paper asks to what 
 extent this idea of an African heritage or African traditions has informed
  the African Commission’s view of human rights. In the first part of the
  paper\, I review the relevant case law of the African Commission and in t
 he second part of the paper I draw on ethnographic research conducted at t
 he Commission’s secretariat and sessions in Banjul\, as well as intervie
 ws with its various interlocutors (e.g. NGOs). Drawing on this data\, I ar
 gue that there is not much to the African fingerprint and that disagreemen
 ts about specific human rights issues (disagreements that would be couched
  in terms of cultural difference and relativism\, following the Asian Valu
 es debate of the 1990s and much of the literature surrounding issues like 
 FGM) are framed not in terms of African values but in terms of procedural 
 accuracy and fidelity.\n\nMore information on the series is available here
 : http://mws.polis.cam.ac.uk/cghr/research_research_group.html.
LOCATION:Room 138\, Alison Richard Building\, Sidgwick Site\, 7 West Rd\, 
 CB3 9DT
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