Nat Rubner. The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Volume 2: The Political Process. Woodbridge: James Currey, 2023. 526 pp. Notes. Index. $140.00. Hardback. ISBN: 9781847013545.
Year: 2025
Type: book-review
Abstract: In the second of a two-volume set, Nat Rubner continues his extraordinarily welldocumented account of the origins and drafting of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR).Adopted in 1981 by the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the Charter went into effect in 1986.It is widely heralded as one of three charter-based regional human rights systems (with Europe and the Americas being the other two), as well as the first non-Western declaration of human rights.In Volume 1, Rubner sets the stage by interrogating the political, intellectual, and cultural foundations of the African human rights system.Specifically, he lays out debates within newly independent African states about the meaning of colonialism and postcolonialism not just for politics, but also for literature, religion, identity (negritude), education, and language.The volume concludes that, far from being a simple corollary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ACHPR emerged from a rejection by African states of Western so-called universalism and a desire for content driven by the needs and realities of Africa.Volume 2 turns to the political process by which the Charter was drafted.Given the previous volume's conclusion that the African human rights system was a "reproach" rather than an endorsement of universal human rights, Rubner begins by introducing a puzzle.In an African political environment that was fundamentally opposed to external interference in African affairs, who or what might kickstart the political process that resulted in the adoption the ACHPR?Here, Rubner's answer runs counter to other arguments that focus on the role of Western governments, the United Nations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), whose influence he largely discountswith the important exception of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ).Rather, a core group of African individuals, along with the ICJ, led a process that conceptualized human rights as an African project whereby a human rights charter would come from the OAU and would reflect African values rather than Western ideas and precedents (187).The book is divided into three parts.Part One ("The Outsiders") documents the limited and sometimes counterproductive influence of external actors (i.e., Western governments, the UN, and NGOs) in addressing specific human rights abuses within Africa and in spurring the creation of an African human rights system.Contrary to arguments that spotlight the influence of these external actors, Rubner offers extensive evidence that in dealing with the West on human rights issues, African states "were hardly the weak party" (2).In
Source: African Studies Review
Author: Eileen Doherty-Sil
Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4414484313
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