The Right to Development and the Fight Against Racism

 Excepts of Statement by Bonny Ibhawoh (Chair, United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development) at the International Dialogue on Promoting and Protecting the Rights of People of African Descent and their communities In Latin America and the Caribbean in the Context of Covid-19: Building Back Better

The United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development with is the foundational document on the Right to Development conceives the right to development as the inalienable human right of everyone to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized. A key theme in the right to development is self-determination and the equitable distribution of the resources of nations and the global community. 

The Right to Development Agenda establishes development as a fundamental right and puts people at the centre of the development process. Development is seen as a comprehensive economic, social, cultural and political process, which aims at the constant improvement of the well-being of the entire population and of all individuals on the basis of their active, free and meaningful participation in development and in the fair distribution of benefits resulting therefrom.

The right to development was first articulated and formulated by representatives from developing countries that had long been subjected to colonial racism, in their demand for a new international economic order which would be more favourable to the development of less developed countries and for the full control by people over their own natural resources. Much of this early was done under the auspices of the Non-Allied Movement at the UN. Afro-descendant people were at the forefront of putting the right to development on the international human rights agenda.

Since the adoption of the Declaration on the Right to Development by the UN General Assembly in 1986, the right to development has become a well-established principle in the international human rights system. The DRTD outlines three levels of state responsibility for the Right to Development a) in national policies within individual state jurisdiction, b) in policies affecting persons outside the state’s jurisdiction c) in global and regional partnerships. 

Since the adoption of the DRTD, efforts have been made at the UN and elsewhere to operationalize the right to development. The right to development has not been recognized at per with other human rights. There remains a tendency to see the right to development as a “subsidiary right”; a “Third World” right.

The good news, however, is that the intergovernmental Working Group on the Right to Development of the UN Human Rights Council continues to explore the content and scope of a legally binding international instrument on the right to development. The goal is to advance the right to development beyond a declaration to a legally enforceable Covenant.

International human rights and systemic racism

I will now comment on the intersection between the right to development and the fight against systemic racism. The intersection between racism and the right to development manifests in all three levels of individual state obligations, extra-territorial jurisdiction, and global partnership. 

Equality, including the right to freedom from discrimination, is at the core of the human rights framework, and included in all human rights instruments. Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides for equal enjoyment of rights and freedoms “without distinction of any kind, such as race …”. 

Article 20 (2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence. The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination acknowledges systemic racism and obliges States parties to actively combat racism.  

The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action adopted in 2001,  reasserts the principles of equality and non-discrimination, and assigns primary responsibility for combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance to States, as duty bearers, while also calling for active involvement by international and non-governmental organizations, political parties, national human rights institutions, the private sector, the media and civil society. The Durban Declaration recognized that social biases and discrimination prevailing in public and private institutions continued to create barriers for people of African descent, including in the realization of human rights.

Racism and the Right to Development 

These provisions recognize a global reality that racism is not confined to any single region of the world. It is a worldwide phenomenon that requires a worldwide response. On the legal and institutional framework to fight racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination ERD has stated that “racial discrimination or the potential for racial discrimination exists in all societies.” 

In relations to persons of African descent, the key historical manifestations of institutional and systemic racism are the slave trade and colonialism. 

The protests against racial injustice that have erupted globally has brought renewed attention to the lingering question of institutionalised racial discrimination and its devastating impact on racialized communities, particularly communities of Afro descendant peoples. The disproportionately high infection and mortality rate of COVID 19 among racial minorities and recent incidents of the excessive use of force towards people of African descent have brought reviewed attention to the lingering problem of racism and the need to prioritise within the international human rights agenda. 

Racism, racial discrimination, and racial injustice are violations of fundamental human rights. Racism is linked to state violence, lack of economic opportunities, poverty, unemployment, and health that all bear directly on the right to development. 

The UN DRD defines development as “an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized.’ It calls for free and meaningful participation in development and fair distribution of its benefits; and makes equality of opportunity for development ‘a prerogative both of nations and of individuals who make up nations.’ 

Central to the Right to Development agenda is the elimination of historical and systemic obstacles that have impeded development in some regions of the world. As reflected in the preamble of the DRTD, the obstacles to be eliminated include “the massive and flagrant violations of the human rights of the peoples and individuals affected by situations such as those resulting from colonialism, neo-colonialism, apartheid, all forms of racism and racial discrimination, foreign domination and occupation, aggression and threats against national sovereignty, national unity and territorial integrity and threats of war.” 

Article 5 of the DRTD reinforces this point by enjoining states to take resolute steps to eliminate the violations of the human rights of peoples affected by racism and racial discrimination. The elimination of racism is therefore recognized as essential to fulfilling the right to development. 

The Declaration on the Right to Development is one of only a few international human rights instruments that explicitly frames racism and racial discrimination as a violation of universal human rights and a barrier to the enjoyment of human rights by those who face racial discrimination. 

While others several UN human rights prohibit discrimination on the basis of race and other individual and collective identities, the Declaration on the Right to Development explicitly identifies racism and racial discrimination as key obstacles to the enjoyment of fundamental human rights and calls for resolute steps to eliminate racism. 

The EMRTD Study 

Given the centrality of anti-racism to the right to development agenda, the Expert Mechanism on the right to Development (EDRTD) is undertaking a thematic study on the connections between the right to development and the fight against racism. The issue of racism has been a longstanding item on the UN human rights agenda. I note the important role played by the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in putting racism and racial discrimination on the international human rights agenda. 

I also recognize the pivotal role of the World Conferences Against Racism (WCAR) organized by UNESCO to promote struggle against racism ideologies, policies and practices, notably the Durban Conference. The EMRTD is committed to supporting this ongoing work.

The objectives of my Expert Mechanism’s study on Racism are threefold.  

1. The first is to examine systemic and institutional racism as obstacles to fulfilling the non-discrimination, equality of opportunity and fair distribution provisions of the right to development at both national and international levels, that hinders the entitlement of all human persons and peoples to participate in, contribute to and enjoy self-determined development. This includes examining how systemic racism within individual state jurisdictions impede the right to development, for example, by exacerbating poverty and inequality. 

2. The second is to examine systemic and institutional racism as it manifests in policies affecting persons outside the state’s jurisdiction, in the context of the right to development.

3. The third is to examine the obstacles that racism and racial discrimination pose to international cooperation and global partnerships on the right to development. This includes examining how racism and racial prejudice have shaped the debates about the right to development manifesting in the persistent lack of its effective operationalization and recognition at par with other human rights.

Two recent global developments make this study necessary and timely.

The first is the current global movement for racial justice which has called to question historical and contemporary structures of racial discrimination. Across the world, marginalized racialized groups are calling for racial equality, demanding anti-racist interventions from the state, international organizations, and the international community.

The second motivation for this study is the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on racialized communities which has worsened poverty and reduced the quality of life in these communities. In many countries, maps of the pandemic reveal its disproportionate impact on racialized communities economically, socially and in terms of their general wellbeing. 

The recent report of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent does an excellent job of analysing the links between systemic racism and COVID-19 pandemic. As the Working Group report states: “Structural racial discrimination exacerbates inequality in access to health care and treatment, leading to racial disparities in health outcomes and increased mortality and morbidity for people of African descent. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought racial disparity and discrimination to the surface in institutions designed to confer justice, equity and redress.” 

The social and economic disruptions of COVID-19 have highlighted the persistence of deep inequalities within and between nations. The United Nations describes it as an explosion of inequality. There is need for urgent and concerted international action to prevent COVID-19 from creating even wider inequalities and exacerbating poverty around the world. These issues can all be addressed through the framework of the right to development.  

As individual states and the international community map out plan on how to distribute COVID-19 vaccines, there is justified concern that racial minority communities will be excluded and marginalized in the distribution of the vaccine. Even though it should be expected that racialized communities  that have been disproportionably affected by the COVID-19 pandemic should be among the first in line to receive the vaccines, we know from the history of pandemics and present day health disparities that racialized communities are at risk of being ignored or relegated to the background in distribution plans. 

Vulnerable racialised minority communities who may not be able to assert political and economic power in COVAX distribution should be given a voice in the distribution plans. Initiatives such as the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator must consider the historical marginalization of racialized communities, particularly people of African descent and the economic and health disparities that they have made them disproportionally vulnerable to the pandemic.

Racism as an obstacle to development has been recognized by other international organizations. The European Commission Action Plan against racism in the European Union issued on 18 September 2020 acknowledges that high levels of inequality arising from racism represent an obstacle to the achievement of Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. 

The Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development is committed to identifying obstacles of systemic racism to the realization of the right to development and to making concrete policy recommendations on how to overcome this obstacle both in the context of individual state jurisdictions and in the context of global cooperation and partnerships. We welcome the cooperation and support of states, academics, practitioners, and civil society organizations in undertaking our work. 

The Right to Development and the Fight Against Racism

12/07/2020 12:38:00 PM human rights, world

Human Rights, Nation-States and the Persistence of Oppressive Privilege in a Divided World

Human Rights, Nation-States and the Persistence of Oppressive Privilege - A commentary on Eric D. Weitz,A world divided: The global struggle for human rights in the age of nation-states, (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2019). 

Eric Weitz's book A World Divided offers a compelling history of the global struggle for human rights in the age of nation-states. Eric Weitz presents insightful stories of travelers, scholars, activists and statesmen who fashioned empires into nation-states from the late eighteenth century to the present period. These are stories of rights ideas and struggles at defining moments in nation-state foundings and formations. Overall, it is a narrative of the paradox of human rights, celebrating its triumphs and critiquing its failures. 

My commentary focuses on two themes that emerge from the book. The first is the question of human rights ontology; not necessarily the definition of human rights, but the varied contextual meanings of human rights and the relationships between them. I am interested in how Weitz deploys human rights as an analytical lens for his historical reconstructions. 

Like the concept of globalization, the notion of “human rights” provides historians with fresh analytic lens for creative reinterpretations of the past. With this new lens, familiar stories of human struggles, political crises and social upheavals can be re-told in ways that further illuminate our understanding of these histories. 

The doctrine of human rights has become the dominant language for public good in our world. It has become the language of choice for making and contesting entitlement claims, spawning a global human rights revolution – a revolution of norms and values that has redefined our understanding of ethics and justice.  So, the question inevitably arises: given the discursive power of human rights today, how much of the history that we see through human rights lens is an illumination of the past as it was, and how much of that history is a projection from the lens itself? 

The second theme of my commentary is the persistence of oppressive privilege. Like all histories, A Divided World is a narrative of changes and continuities – changes in the expansion of citizenship rights in emergent nations-states, and continuities of systems of oppression and exclusion. In between the lines of Weitz’s narrative of human rights struggles, we can also find histories of oppressive privileges of all sorts – white privilege, Christian privilege, ethno-cultural privilege, intellectual and epistemological privilege, and perhaps, the most enduring of all, male privilege. 

If the grand narrative of A World Divided is the complicated and paradoxical history of human rights, its sub-narrative is the equally complicated history of the persistence of oppressive privilege. Oppressive privilege has shaped the history human rights over the past two centuries. To fully appreciate Weitz’s grand human rights narrative, therefore, we must pay attention to the sub-narrative of oppressive privilege. 

The Ontology of Human Rights

The historical ontology of human rights - understood broadly as the interconnected socio-political processes by which human rights ideas have emerged - is evident throughout A Divided World.   The compelling cases in the book show the contradictions and partiality of human rights advances when built around national citizenship. 

Exclusion and inclusion, rights protection and violations, Weitz argues, have defined the emergence of the nation-state. “The contradictions are blatant and cannot be easily recovered resolved or wished away… They are irresolvable and an intrinsic part of the human rights system based on nation-state citizenship.”  

While historical reinterpretation using human rights lens can illuminate our understanding of the past, there is always the risk of overexposure. Here, photography offers a useful metaphor. In the hands of the historian, the human rights lens is most effective when it is neither underexposed nor overexposed. When underexposed, the story is deficient because the complex histories of rights ideas and struggles are insufficiently illuminated. 

Too little of the “light” that human rights have reflected on human events is recorded. When overexposed, however, the narrative becomes distorted. Too much of today’s human rights sensibilities is projected into interpretations of historical ideas and events. As in photography, therefore, effectively deploying the human rights lens for historical reconstruction requires the correct amount of exposure. 

Historians are often reminded to avoid foisting their own problem definitions on the people and societies they study. Historians should leave open the possibility that the historical actors they write about might have considered themselves part of a different drama than the one the historian imagines. 

In the context of A Word Divided, this raises a crucial question: Did eighteenth century Western travelers, who explicitly excluded Indians and Blacks from rights bearing citizenship, think of human rights in ways even remotely resembling contemporary conceptions of human rights? Weitz clarifies that the historical actors he writes about had a partial understanding of human rights, one that availed only certain categories of people defined by race, religion, ethnicity, gender and other identity markers. 

Weitz largely succeeds in the delicate task of reinterpreting familiar histories of nation-state formation through human rights lens in ways that appear “correctly exposed” – neither underexposed nor overexposed. However, he does not tell us what type of human rights lens he has used. Although he argues that the nation-state and human rights have played a central role in the making of our global world, he does not offer a definitive answer to the question of the meaning of human rights.  

Rather, he takes “an open ended, capacious, and practical approach to the disputes regarding the philosophy and history of human rights.”  Anticipating critics, Weitz states that some will dispute that the cases he recounts have anything to do with human rights. “They would say that these examples and thousands of others we could summon are too fragmentary and episodic to constitute a full blown program of human rights.”  

Even though he concedes that we need some distinctions, he rejects this argument, opting for a more fluid understanding of human rights.  On this, I agree with Weitz. The essentialist definitions of human rights preferred by those who see human rights as a uniquely twentieth century phenomenon disconnected from earlier notions of rights, limits our understanding of how rights ideas and struggles have shaped our world. A less rigid notion of human rights allows for better understanding of the deep and complex history and politics of human rights.

Still, the debate about human rights ontology remains integral to histories of human rights. Making histories of pre-twentieth century human rights struggles intelligible to twenty-first century audiences demands some definitional parameters. Weitz acknowledges that as the circle of rights bearing citizens has expanded, so has the meaning of these rights. Therefore, in order to fully understand the historical development of human rights, we first “need to see just how radical a break is our own modern world from the preceding millennia marked by empires; small, regional forms of governance; and tribes and clans - all of them built systems of inequality and non-recognition at least in terms of rights of other individuals.”  

Indeed, only since 1945 has the emergence of international human rights offered in model of universal rights beyond the nation-states. While we might debate whether this late model of universal human rights constitutes the defining essence of human rights, most commentators agree that it provides the ontological reference point for our understanding of human rights. 

The universalist human rights model that emerged in the aftermath World War II, and in the context of the United Nations, was a response to the limitations of nation-state-based citizenship rights. The holocaust and other war-time atrocities showed that states could not be trusted to protect the rights of citizens and subjects. The adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights marked the international recognition of certain fundamental and inalienable rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled simply by virtue of their humanity, and not because they are citizens of the nations. 

The hope was that universal human rights would be the antidote to the partiality and contradictions of nation-state-based citizenship rights regimes. This promise has, of course, not been fully materialized. However, it provides a powerful reference point for understanding histories of rights struggles in the era of empires and emergent nations states. 

Oppressive Privilege

Scholars have long drawn attention to the inequities and injustices wrought on societies by systems of oppressive privilege. In his influential 1891 land reform treatise titled The Birthright of Man, the Scottish classicist William Ogilvie described “landlordism” and aristocratic land monopolies as a “most oppressive privilege, by the operation of which the happiness of mankind has been for ages invaded and restrained, more than by all the tyrannies of kings, the imposture of priests, and the chicane of lawyers, taken together...” A few men, he lamented, “were permitted to engross a most oppressive privilege - the exclusive rights to the immovable value of soil.” 

Later political theorist have shown how the preservation of oppressive privilege in the face of popular pressure for egalitarian measures, provides the principal motivation for the separation between the public political realms with citizenship rights and a private non-political one with limited rights protection.  

If citizenship rights in the eighteenth and nineteenth century contexts that Weitz discusses were so restrictive and premised on the exclusion and subordination of others, do they really fit within the ontology of human rights? True, rights may bestow privileges, but oppressive privileges (embodied, ascribed or acquired), reinforced by power, is the very antithesis of human rights. 

Oppressive privilege bestows benefits, immunities or exemptions on persons or restricted group of persons, to the exclusion of others, and at the expense of the rights of others. As Weitz notes, the establishment and expansion of human rights have never been pure and straight. The paradoxes of human rights manifest in the patterns of inclusions and exclusions that accompanied nation-states and the establishment citizenship-based rights regimes.  

Human rights are typically framed as claims against the authorial power of states; yet human rights have historically been mediated by hierarchies of power and privilege. A Divided World offers many examples of this. In his discussion of Indian removals in America, Weitz notes that the vision of the nation-state as the preserve of one race meant that Euro-American whites would be able to enjoy the full complement of rights available at the time, while indigenous people will be pushed to the margins.  

White privilege was founded on what Weitz describes as the “racial international” - a racialized way of thinking about human diversity that transcended national borders. Nineteenth century Western statesmen and writers drew on Darwin’s ideas on biological evolution and the “survival of the fittest” to promote an agenda of scientific racism that affirmed the embodied privileges of some, with devastating consequences for others. The nation-state, defined in racial terms, would mark the “the most exclusionary and potentially deadly form of categorizing populations” as Weitz shows in the cases of United States, Brazil, Namibia, and Rwanda and Burundi.  

Discourses and practices of citizenship rights in these historical contexts also then become discourses and practices of privilege - white privilege, Christian privilege, varied forms of ethno-cultural privileges, ethnic privilege, religious privilege, male privilege and elite privilege. 

To understand the paradoxes of human rights, we must first understand the ways in which oppressive privilege determined patterns of rights inclusion and exclusion. For example, the persistence of embodied privilege partly explains why nineteenth century British liberal reformists could condemn the contemptuous way English imperialists treated the Indians while at the same time advancing arguments of Indian intellectual and cultural inferiority that sustained such contemptuous treatment.   

In the increasingly cosmopolitan world of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Western military, technological and governmental superiority came with immense power and privileges for those within the circle of a particular race, religion, culture and ideology. This would shape the pace and patterns of rights inclusion and exclusion in the era of declining empires and emergent nation-states. Privileged ideas about the hierarchy of races, cultures and civilizations influenced the organization of states and determined who could be entitled to right-bearing citizenship, when and how.

Weitz provides an insightful example of the power of this kind of privilege in the writings of Lord Byron and the English Philhellenes who supported the Greek revolution against Ottoman rule. The Philhellenes justified the exclusion of Muslims from the Greek state on grounds of what they saw as Greek subjection under Ottoman “barbarity.” Byron called on the Great Powers to rescue the Greeks from bondage and destruction while ignoring the atrocities committed by Greeks against Muslims. 

For all their humanitarian sensibilities, Byron and other Philhellenes “could not surmount the political contradictions of their positions.” They were in love with Greece, and it was a Greek state that they wanted, one in which other populations, most notably Muslims and Jews, would be rendered invisible.  

Why couldn’t Bryon and other Philhellenes of his time surmount the political contradictions of their positions? Partly, I would argue, because of the persistence of oppressive privilege – in this case, ethno-religious privilege. Philhellenes like Bryon campaigned for the Greek cause by arousing European consciences; but they also invoked the specter of the loss of Christian dominance and privilege. 

Could Europeans stand by and allow fellow Christians to be subdued? In Russia, pan-Slavists and an emergent public sphere exercised similar pressure on the tsarist government to aid fellow Orthodox Christians.  This was as much a cause to uphold Christian ascendancy and privileges as it was a cause for liberty. The Greek revolt would ultimately succeed only with European help, rendered in the name of Christian liberties. 

It did not matter that the rights claimed by Greek nationalists were limited to men who adhered to the Greek Orthodox religion. However, as Weitz notes, these rights were not static. Especially after 1945, they broadened significantly and expanded progressively. But to understand the pace and patterns of rights expansion and contraction, we must pay attention to the tenacity of oppressive privilege.

The persistence of oppressive privilege also explains the paradox of human rights in the case of Indian removals in the United States. Once indigenous nations were defeated, and Minnesota and the Dakotas were incorporated as federal states, US politicians contemplated the legal and political status of Indians. Did the Fourteenth amendment equal protection clause apply to these newly subjugated people? Were Indians to be accorded citizen rights as individuals or as collectives?  The court decisions that addressed these questions struggled with balancing the liberal promise of citizenship rights with entrenched white privilege. 

As Weitz shows, these court decisions affirmed Indian collective land rights but only to the extent that they did not impinge on the embodied, ascribed and acquired privileges of white settler population. Indians, the courts held, had rights of occupancy, not of absolute title. So long as they haunted, fished and farmed on areas clearly delineated theirs following conquest, and so long as they had not ceded land to whites through treaties, Indians possessed their land. But the absolute ultimate title lay with the “discoverer,” the Europeans and their descendants who had come from distant shores.  

In effect, the extent of Indian rights was contingent on what white privilege would accommodate. As Weitz notes, the Euro-Americans who settled in Minnesota quickly “assumed all the rights, privileges, and protections that the American nation-state had to offer. If newly arrived from Europe, they only had to declare their intent to become citizens and they could vote, speak out, and find redress in the courts.”  

The devastating power of oppressive privilege to subjugate and disenfranchise is perhaps most evident in the case of Brazil. Nineteenth century Brazilian statesmen who lauded the mixing of races, did so only because they believed it would eventually whiten the entire population and lead to the elimination of blacks as a group. 

The extinction of the black race in Brazil was the primary motivation for seemingly liberal attitudes toward miscegenation. Even though Brazilian racists did not believe that race mixing led to the degeneration of the race, (unlike most European and North American intellectual racists of their day), they shared a common goal of maintaining white ascendency and privilege – one group, by segregation, the other by strategic dilution. In all cases, the belief in black inferiority, strengthened by so-called racial science, furthered the ideology of white supremacy and its associated privileges.

Conclusion

The stories that Weitz tells in A World Divided are as much about the tenacity of oppressive privilege as there about human rights and the foundings of nation-states. The logic of the nation-state that emerges and prevailed after World War I was founded on expansions and constrictions of citizenship rights in patterns mediated by oppressive privilege. 

As Weitz concludes from his cases, “The nation-state granted Orthodox Christians in Greece, Euro-Americans in the United States, light skinned males in Brazil the privileges and responsibilities that came with rights. They possessed the benefits of full citizenship, including security of property and persons and the ability to participate politically, that human rights offer. For those who did not fit determinant category, it was a different matter, even more so with the rise of the explicit category of minority.”  

To be sure, since the mid-twentieth century the circle of human rights has extended beyond propertied white men, as was largely the case in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Universal human rights now specifically encompass several previously excluded groups – children, persons with disability, asylum seekers, indigenous people, stateless persons, and more broadly, women. 

However, as we see in the global rise of xenophobic populism, exclusionary nationalism, growing economic inequalities, and the proliferation of toxic forms of digital communication that reinforce prejudice, oppressive privilege continues to constrain human rights. Contemporary debates about the prioritisation of human rights centre on questions of power and privilege. Why have certain human rights agendas gained prominence and visibility over others despite the rhetoric of the indivisibility of human rights? 

Even the dominant generations of human rights ordering where first generation individual-centred civil and political rights precede second generation economic and social, and third generation collective solidarity rights, are steeped in histories of power and oppressive privilege. Power and privilege continue to mediate human rights doctrine, raising fundamental questions about its normative objectivity. 

This partly explains why the bulk of the cases before the International Criminal Court (ICC) have originated in weak African states and why, as Weitz opines, it is unlikely that any of the Great Powers will ever be hauled before the court for human rights violations.  Thus, as in the eighteenth century, the reach of the ICC is contingent on what Great Power privileges will allow.

A World Divided captures the contradictions of human rights and the processes of inclusion and exclusion as the circle of human rights expanded with the emergence of nation-state settings. However, explaining these contradictions remains an ongoing task. We need to better understand how historical and contemporary systems of oppressive privilege engender the many paradoxes of human rights so vividly captured in this book.

(This commentary first appeared as a book review in the Journal of Genocide Research)

Human Rights, Nation-States and the Persistence of Oppressive Privilege in a Divided World

9/06/2020 05:57:00 PM history, human rights, world

"Dad, what did you do for racial justice?"

Years from now, kids will ask their parents, "Dad, what side were you on during the great protest for racial justice of 2020?" Can you look them in the eye and say "On the side of justice," or will it be "I took no position"?

"Dad, what did you do for racial justice?"

5/31/2020 01:19:00 PM human rights, reflections, world

Is Democracy in Crisis?

A panel of scholars discuss the crisis of democratic politics, the possibilities of democratic innovations and the future of politics

• Leonardo Avritzer, Professor of Political Science at Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil
• Selen Ercan, Associate Professor of Politics, Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra, Australia
• Archon Fung, Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government, Harvard University, USA
• Bonny Ibhawoh, Professor of History, and Centre for Peace Studies, McMaster University, Canada
• Melissa Williams, Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto, Canada
• Moderator: Professor John Gaventa, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK

Is Democracy in Crisis?

6/14/2019 11:22:00 AM human rights, politics, world

Rethinking Human Rights in Africa

Discussions of human rights in Africa are often reduced to simplistic narratives of ruthless violators and benevolent activists. In my new book, Human Rights in Africa (Cambridge University Press) I attempt to go beyond this staid trope.  

This is an account of indigenous African rights traditions embodied in the wisdom of elders and sages; of humanitarians and abolitionists who marshaled arguments about natural rights and human dignity in the cause of antislavery; of the conflictual encounters between natives and colonists in the age of Empire and the “civilizing mission”; of nationalists and anti-colonialists who deployed an emergent lexicon of universal human rights to legitimize long-standing struggles for self-determination; and of dictators and dissidents locked in struggles over power in the era of independence and constitutional rights.

In writing this book, my aim was to tell a story of human rights in Africa that engages key scholarly debates while also appealing to a general audience. This is because the subject of human rights is too important to be left to experts and specialists. Human rights discourses, laws, policies and practices affect the everyday lives of millions of ordinary people in Africa and around the world. I believe it is important to engage the broadest audience possible in conversations about human rights.

In these uncertain times, my hope is that this volume moves forward the conversation on how we can reaffirm human dignity in our societies and actualize human rights ideals in Africa and our world.

Bonny Ibhawoh, Human Rights in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

Bonny Ibhawoh, Human Rights in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2018) [Amazon.com]

Early Reviews

“In Human Rights in Africa, Professor Ibhawoh weaves, in his usual incisive and sharp-witted way, an aptly and appropriately complex and sophisticated story about the long career of human rights thought and action on the African continent. Shorn of the de-historicization, linear progressivism, facile accounting, and de-politicization that has all too often marred human rights scholarship and action in regard to the continent, Human Rights in Africa succeeds vastly in its stated goal of broadly analyzing the development of human rights as idea, discourse and struggle in Africa. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in gaining a thorough understanding of the deep complexity of Africa’s relationship to human rights ideas and practices.”
– Obiora Chinedu Okafor, Professor & York Research Chair in
International and Transnational Legal Studies, York University


“Highly readable, versatile, subtle, nuanced and authoritative, this book gives the subject of human rights an outstanding treatment, superseding most of the current literature on the subject. Its coverage is both balanced and sweeping, moving at a fast pace from the past to the present without losing focus and proportionality. Students will find it a stunning achievement, and scholars will see merit in moving forward so many arguments that the fresh insights open up.”
– Toyin Falola, University Distinguished Teaching Professor and the Frances and Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities,
The University of Texas at Austin

“How can human rights be universal if they originate in one place or are applied to only one sector of humanity? This and related questions have occupied scholars of rights in and outside of Africa for generations. Bonny Ibhawoh’s exciting new work sweeps past this redundancy by delving deeply into rights-based rhetoric, argument, and mobilization by Africans transnationally and transregionally. Ibhawoh connects rights visionaries of the African and diasporic past to the political challenges of the present in provocative and innovative ways and has written a highly readable and teachable book.”
– Benjamin N. Lawrance, Director of INGS, Hon. Barber B. Conable, Jr. Endowed Chair of International Studies, Professor of History and Anthropology, Rochester Institute of Technology

Rethinking Human Rights in Africa

12/09/2017 02:56:00 PM africa, history, human rights

The Paradox of Democracy in Aung San Suu Kyi’s Myanmar

Democracy can be a messy business. Liberal democratic reforms often bring new freedoms and allow for the opening up of civil societies. But the freedoms that come with the transition from dictatorship to democracy not only empower the oppressed and marginalized, they also allow for new forms of repressions in the forms of resurgent nationalisms, xenophobia and hate speech masquerading as free speech. For transitioning states, liberal democracy comes with the good, the bad and the ugly. The real challenge is how to manage the contradictory freedoms that democracy unleashes.

The government of Myanmar under the leadership (even if nominal) of Nobel Peace laureate and democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi has been involved in the systematic ethnic cleansing of the minority Muslim Rohingya population. Under the excuse of cracking down on insurgents in the western Rakhine state, Myanmar’s military and security forces have engaged in rapes, killings and house burnings that have driven thousands of Rohingya from their homes into neighbouring Bangladesh. Human rights organisations have reported mass atrocities that match the violations which the country witnessed under decades of repressive military dictatorships.

So, here is the question: Wasn’t the transition to democracy and the ascension to power of the peace and democracy icon, Aung San Suu Kyi, supposed to usher in an era of freedom and civil liberties in Myanmar? Evidently it hasn’t. What we see in Myanmar is the classic paradox of democratic transition.

One the perverse consequences of democracy in Myanmar is that it has unleashed old antagonisms against the Rohingya Muslims, many of whom migrated to Myanmar (then Burma) when the country was ruled by the British colonists as part of greater India. Although some Rohingya were resident in the country long before colonial rule, they have largely been seen as foreigners. Separatist insurgency in the region reinforced suspicion of the Rohingya.

The interesting point here is that the military dictatorship that ruled Myanmar for much of its history keep things in check. Democratic reforms, beginning with a Constitutional referendum in 2008, unleashed long repressed grievances and animosities. Part of the result is the human tragedy that we see in the country today.

This paradox of democratic transition is evident elsewhere - in Iraq and in the Arab Spring revolutions, from Egypt to Libya. Democracy brings freedoms and opens up civil socisteies. But it also frees up repressed grievances and ignites new conflicts. Without the strong hand of dictatorships to rein these in, they can quickly engulf transitioning states which typically have weak institutions and democratic cultures. The lesson of Myanmar is not the failure of liberal democratic transition. It is a lack of recognition of, and preparedness for the powerful reactionary and exclusionary forces that are also unleased by democratic reforms.

The Paradox of Democracy in Aung San Suu Kyi’s Myanmar

9/17/2017 01:21:00 PM human rights, war and peace

The Dawn of a Post-Human Rights World?

With all the talk about alternative facts and fake news, it is perhaps time to ponder whether the global rise of reactionary populism – from Brexit to Trump – signals the dawn of the end of human rights. The indications are that we are not simply heading towards a “post-truth” era, we might also be headings towards a post-human right world.

When British Tory politicians introduced a bill in 2014 to allow British Judges ignore rulings from the European Court of Human Rights, the British tabloids hailed the move as “The End of Human Rights Farce" and the “end of the Human Rights madness.” Although born out of anxieties over national sovereignty and the European Court's perceived judicial overreach, these headlines speak to a growing cynicism about the value of human rights doctrine in our world today.

The alarm bells have already been raised by those who should know. The BBC reports that in Geneva, home to the UN Human Rights Office, the UN Refugee Agency, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the guardian of the Geneva Conventions on international humanitarian law, there is talk of a 'post human rights' world.

In my forthcoming book on Human Rights in Africa (Cambridge University Press), I argue that the adoption of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 ushered in a tentative global human rights revolution. The post-World War II international human rights order held three distinct, yet related revolutionary promises. It held the promise of a revolution of self-determination, a revolution of democracy and a revolution of equality.

If the granting of independence to formerly colonized nations of Asia and Africa in the 1950s and 60s, marked the triumph of the revolution of self-determination, the post-colonial and post-Cold War global order has failed to materialize the revolutions of democracy and equality.

Across the world, the tentative gains of the human rights revolution are being gradually eroded. With an increasing number of states seemingly reluctant to honor international human rights treaties or fulfil domestic rights obligations, we may indeed be heading towards a post-human rights world characterized by repudiations of established human rights norms and the roll back of international humanitarian law.

The clearest indication of this trend is the global rise of reactionary populism, xenophobia and the growing tolerance of torture. Countries in both the West and the Global South are increasingly reluctant to uphold their commitments to refugee protection and the humanitarian conduct of war under international human rights treaties. Another example is the growing list of countries that have opted to withdraw support for international human rights institutions, such as the International Criminal Court.

The human rights genie, it seems, is being put back in the bottle. These existential challenges to human rights signal the specter of a post-human rights world, and invite serious reflections on old questions about the relevance and legitimacy of universal human rights.

The Dawn of a Post-Human Rights World?

2/20/2017 01:13:00 PM human rights, reflections, world

Xenophobia, Immigration Restrictions and the Dawn of a Post-Human Rights World

Across the world, we are witnessing the gradual erosion of the gains of the post-World War II human rights movement. The clearest indication of this trend is the global rise of reactionary populism, xenophobia and the growing tolerance of torture.

The US immigration restrictions on travel from Muslim countries and the shooting in a Quebec mosque in Canada may be unrelated, but they point to a disturbing trend. With an increasing number of countries reluctant to honor international human rights treaties or fulfill domestic rights obligations, we may be heading towards a post-human rights world -  a world characterized by repudiations of established human rights norms and the roll back of international humanitarian law.

In a world driven to extremes by hate and fear, Prime Minster Trudeau’s declaration that refugees will continue to be welcomed in Canada is a reassuring affirmation of our common humanity.

Xenophobia, Immigration Restrictions and the Dawn of a Post-Human Rights World

1/30/2017 12:40:00 PM human rights, politics, reflections

Unlearning Prejudice: History can teach, but we must be willing to learn

In this fascinating personal account, Charles Dew, a professor of American History at William's College reminds us that racism, like a genetic trait, can be passed on from generation to generation. People learn to be bigots, but bigotry can also be un-learned. History can teach, but we must be willing to learn.

Charles B. Dew, "The Unmaking of a Racist"
Published in the Chronicle of Higher Education

"The racial prejudice I acquired came more through a process of osmosis than anything else. I learned from watching how others around me behaved, starting with my own family. There were separate cups, saucers, plates, and glasses in our kitchen cupboard to be used by the African-American help — Ed, who mowed our lawn, and a wonderful woman named Illinois, who cleaned for us, did our laundry, and occasionally cooked our meals."

"I learned early on that I should never shake hands with a black man or woman. I was not to use Mr. or Mrs. or Miss when I spoke to an African-American adult. We had separate bathrooms — a poorly appointed half bath off the back porch for the help, a nice, fully tiled bathroom on the second floor of our house for us. I was 8 years old when I watched my father explode in almost uncontrollable anger at a black man who came to the wrong door of our home."

Unlearning Prejudice: History can teach, but we must be willing to learn

10/17/2016 11:39:00 AM history, human rights

Revisiting Biafra: War and Humanitarian Crisis

"The Biafran Humanitarian Crisis."

A new book by my former PhD student. Dr Arua Omaka (now lecturer at Federal University, Ndufu Alike, Ikwo, Nigeria).

The Nigeria-Biafra War been described as one of the most significant global humanitarian crisis in the post-Second World War era. Little has been written about this crisis. It has largely been forgotten even as the world deals with comparable humanitarian crisis in Syria and other parts of the world.

Dr. Omaka offers an engaging account in his book. A must-read for anyone interested in African studies and Global Peace and Conflicts studies.

Revisiting Biafra: War and Humanitarian Crisis

10/13/2016 04:14:00 PM africa, history, human rights, war and peace

The Future of Human Rights

What is the future of human rights? My hope is that as the world becomes more sensitive to human rights violations, we will see less and less of the most extreme and egregious abuses and violations of the past centuries – mass atrocities such as genocide, massacres and ethnic cleansing.

But that will not mean that the struggles for human rights will be easier or less urgent. Human rights are not just about violations but also about the legacies of violations. Human rights are intrinsically tied to questions of social justice and binding inclusive communities. So, the future of human rights that I see is one in which history and our understanding of the past will pay a much bigger role. Where we will have to pay as much attention to the legacies of past violations as we do to active violations.

The Future of Human Rights

9/17/2016 01:33:00 PM human rights

Public Talk: Truth, Justice and Reconciliation

Speaking on the topic: "Truth, Justice and Reconciliation: Re-imagining Human Rights in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding" at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Lund, Sweden

Truth, Justice and Reconciliation: Re-imagining Human Right in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding

Abstract

There is an assumed tension between human rights and peacebuilding. Although human rights advocates and conflict resolution specialists share the common aim of building stable societies based on the rule of law, they often disagree on method. Conflict resolvers are characterized as willing to compromise rights and ignore abuses in order to secure political agreement. Human rights advocates, on the other hand, are seen as idealistic and uncompromising in seeking redress for violations, even at the cost of prolonging conflict and human suffering. This tension between the principles of human rights and the pragmatics of peacebuilding is most evident in the work of national Truth and Reconciliation Commissions established in post-conflict societies. Since the establishment of the South African TRC in 1994, there has been a proliferation of TRCs as a mechanism of transitional justice. Charged with uncovering the truth about abuses, providing justice to victims and fostering national reconciliation, most TRCs have taken up human rights and peacebuilding tasks. How have TRCs sought to balance their human rights and peacebuilding mandates? Focusing on the work of TRCs in four post-conflict countries – South Africa, Rwanda, Peru and Morocco - this paper explores the relationship between human rights, justice and national reconciliation. It makes the case for a pragmatic yet principled model of Truth and Reconciliation that integrates human rights and conflict-prevention strategies.

Public Talk: Truth, Justice and Reconciliation

6/07/2016 08:28:00 AM human rights, war and peace

Empowering Women and the Nation: Lessons from Rwanda

In the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report for 2015, an annual ranking of the world's most equal countries for men and women, the small African country, Rwanda, ranked 6th globally, ahead of the United states, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Germany and Denmark.

Rwanda has been described as “the best place to be a women in Africa.” Women constitute 63 percent of the membership of the Rwandan parliament. That means that there are more women than men involved in the legislative process. I would add that it is one of the best places to be a woman anywhere in the world.

How did Rwanda manage to rank so highly? After the horrific genocide of 1999 that devastated and traumatized the country, the Rwandan government put in place a comprehensive set of laws to promote women’s participation in the political, social and economic life of the country. This was seen as critical to the process of national reconstruction and healing. The laws enacted have facilitated women’s participation in local politics, given women the right to inherit land, share the assets of a marriage and obtain credit. As many girls as boys receive primary and secondary education, maternal mortality is lower and the birth rate is falling.

This achievement is the result of a comprehensive program of national reconciliation and re-integration put in place after the genocide. It included the establishment of a National Unity and Reconciliation Commission whose mandate is to “organize national public debates aimed at promoting reconciliation, foster tolerance and a culture of peace and human rights, and denounce any ideas aimed at disunity."

The Commission is also tasked with educating Rwandese on their rights and the rights of others, draft laws to foster reconciliation and monitor whether authorities and the people in general "respect and observe the policy of national unity and reconciliation." While not all the lofty goals of national reconciliation and human rights protection have been achieved, Rwanda has made significant progress in the key area of empowering its women and girl-children.

The simple lesson here is that empowering women and protecting women’s rights is a matter of commitment and political will, more than anything else. Where there is political will, the familiar arguments of resource limitation and cultural tradition often used as excuse to resist changes aimed at empowering women can be surmounted. That Rwanda, a resource limited and traditionally conservative society, has managed to uplift its women to unprecedented levels, only two decades after genocide, is a valuable lesson for the rest of the world.

Empowering Women and the Nation: Lessons from Rwanda

4/21/2016 12:37:00 PM africa, human rights

Truth and Reconciliation in Canada: Lessons from the South African TRC

After 6 years of deliberations, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission last week released its long-awaited report. The TRC was established following the settlement arising from the abuses by state agents against indigenous people in the residential school system.

The landmark report details accounts of the forced assimilation of aboriginal children and physical and sexual abuse in state-funded, church-run boarding schools. It concludes that what happened at the schools, and the broader aboriginal policy that they were a part of, “can best be described as ‘cultural genocide.’”

The use of the term “cultural genocide” has sparked a furor in Canada’s normally staid public political discourse. Deeply divided opinions have been voiced on the appropriateness of using a term typically reserved of mass killings to describe these historical events.

The polarized reactions that have greeted the Canadian TRC are strikingly similar to the reactions that followed the release of the South African TRC Report a decade ago. Scholars of South Africa often question whether the South African TRC was a “miracle” or model. Can it serve as a model for other countries in the aftermath of serious human rights abuses? Or was it a miracle of the sort that occurs but rarely in the life of nations, dependent on the compelling personalities of extraordinary leaders? The answer seems somewhere in-between.

In their tribute to Nelson Mandela, Justice Sinclair and the other leaders of the Canadian TRC acknowledged that the South African TRC was an inspiration for their work. They stated that their understanding of the purpose and value of truth-telling and reconciliation “owe a great deal” to the South African TRC. Reading through the Canadian TRC Report and its 94 recommendations, the influence of the South African TRC is indeed evident.

As was the case in South Africa, many Canadians have welcomed the Canadian TRC Report as a step towards national catharsis and reconciliation. But as in South Africa where some derisively dismissed the TRC as the “Kleenex Commission” (in reference to the emotional scenes at the Commission’s public hearings), some Canadian have been critical of the Report.

One newspapers contributor commented: “If you want the average Canadian to turn their backs on you, keep using the term ‘Cultural Genocide.’ This is a nonsensical appellation and one sure to get everyone’s backs up. Genocide is what happened in the deliberate and methodical extermination of 6 million Jews by the Germans in WW2 and by the Turks against the Armenians.” The TRC Report need not get anyone’s back up.

This is where I think Canada can learn from South Africa. In South Africa, the TRC did not resolve the complex questions of historical injustices perpetrated under apartheid and opinion remains divided about its record on promoting national reconciliation. What the Commission so effectively did, however, was to provide a forum for open discussions about historical and continuing injustices that had long been ignored or mentioned in hushed tones.

Even amidst the divergent reactions it garnered, the South African TRC Report provided the essential first step in the journey towards coming to terms with a nation’s dark past and charting the path towards reconciliation.

The Canadian TRC Report can play a similar role. It will take the commitment and goodwill of political and civil leaders to push a national program of restitution and reconciliation. Archbishop Desmond Tutu who chaired the South African TRC used Ubuntu, the traditional African notion of interdependent humanity, to legitimize the work of the TRC and to sell its vision of reconciliation to a skeptical nation.

In Canada, a nation that celebrates tolerance and diversity, the TRC Report can provide the foundation of a long overdue program of national learning about a dark chapter of Canadian history.

A first step will be to heed the call of the Report that students in Canadian schools be required to take courses in the history and legacy of aboriginal people and in particular, the history of the residential schools.

Truth and Reconciliation in Canada: Lessons from the South African TRC

6/09/2015 07:50:00 AM history, human rights

Free Blogger Raif Badawi

I have blogged about human right and social justice since 2007. But I have always understood that the right to freely express oneself through bogging or other social media platform is one that is not equally enjoyed around the world. Raif Badawi is serving a sentence of 10 years in prison and 1000 lashes for blogging in Saudi Arabia. Amnesty International has declared him a Prisoner of Conscience. The freedom of expression is a universal right that should be protected. It is the responsibility of freedom and peace-loving people to continues the struggle to free Raif Badawi and others like him.

Join the Amnesty International Campaign to free Raif Badawi 

Free Blogger Raif Badawi

10/31/2014 11:29:00 PM human rights

What were our parents thinking?

In a recent interview, Christopher Till who is the director of the Apartheid Museum in South Africa talks about the reaction of children and young South Africans when they visit the museum. He noted that many of the children, who were born after the end of apartheid, visit the museum with their parents. What he found most remarkable was how the children interact with each other. After their exposure to the cruelty and brutality of the apartheid system, one question always comes out of their mouths: “What were our parents thinking?”

This speaks volumes. Times have changed. A new generation of South Africans simply cannot wrap their minds around what would have motivated their parents to create or support the cruel and inhuman system of apartheid. "How could our parents have treated other human beings like this?,"  I can imagine them asking themselves?

There is a lesson here for all us in the positions we take on the key moral questions of today - racism, homophobia, poverty and injustice. What positions are we taking today that will prompt our children to ask incredulously, a generation from now:

“What were our parents thinking?”

What were our parents thinking?

8/06/2014 08:10:00 PM africa, history, human rights

A Harvest of Books

It's been a particularly productive year for me and my colleagues at McMaster. Seven books published with some of the most reputable academic presses on a vast range of subjects - advertising and commercial culture in Nazi Germany; suicide in New Zealand; representations of the First World War in Britain, three books exploring human rights, christian identities and energy/conservation in Canada, and of course African encounters with Imperial Justice. So, we have seven more reasons to celebrate this December. We'll be toasting to a year of hard, productive and rewarding work.

A Harvest of Books

11/20/2013 01:58:00 AM education, history, human rights

Imperial Justice: Africans in Empire's Court

After 5 years in the making "Imperial Justice" is finally out with Oxford University Press (UK). This book is not simply about imperial justice and the adjudication of Empire, it is about dealing with difference. How do individuals and societies construct, maintain and negotiate difference? How do we deal with those who look, think and act different from us? My hope is that the book will find an audience beyond academic readers.

I am encouraged by the comments of one early reader:

"I am really enjoying the book. It is not only fascinating but well written!  You've done a wonderful job of organizing piles of detailed information into a coherent structure that still has all the human drama that leads the reader through. I don't often describe scholarly books as 'page turners' but this one is." - Ruth Pincoe, Editorial Consultant

http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199664849.do#.UgrjZZKshcY

Imperial Justice: Africans in Empire's Court

8/13/2013 10:27:00 PM history, human rights, reflections

On Trayvon Martin

"There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts." 
- Mahatma Gandhi 

On Trayvon Martin

7/15/2013 11:45:00 PM human rights, Tributes, world

Colonial Brutality Revisited: "Atoning for the Sins of Empire"

In this insightful New York Times op-ed, the historian of Africa David Anderson, reflects on the historic decision by the British government to pay compensation to Africans who suffered torture in the hands of British colonial officials in Kenya. Anderson cautions today's political leaders that with the passage of time, today's human rights violations will have to be paid for in the future.

Anderson asks: "Would the United States be so accommodating to a similar claim? In the current political climate, probably not. But times change. Fifty years from now, will Americans face claims from Guantánamo survivors? You might, and perhaps you should."

******************************************

Atoning for the Sins of Empire

By David M. Anderson 

THE British do not torture. At least, that is what we in Britain have always liked to think. But not anymore. In a historic decision last week, the British government agreed to compensate 5,228 Kenyans who were tortured and abused while detained during the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s. Each claimant will receive around £2,670 (about $4,000).

The money is paltry. But the principle it establishes, and the history it rewrites, are both profound. This is the first historical claim for compensation that the British government has accepted. It has never before admitted to committing torture in any part of its former empire.

In recent years there has been a clamor for official apologies. In 2010, Britain formally apologized for its army’s conduct in the infamous “Bloody Sunday” killings in Northern Ireland in 1972, and earlier this year Prime Minister David Cameron visited Amritsar, India, the site of a 1919 massacre, and expressed “regret for the loss of life.”

The Kenyan case has been in process for a decade in London’s High Court. The British fought to avoid paying reparations, so the decision to settle is a significant change of direction. The decision comes months ahead of the 50th anniversary of the British departure from Kenya — once thought of as the “white man’s country” in East Africa.

The Kenya case turned on the evidence of historians, including my own role as an expert witness. I identified a large tranche of documents that the British government smuggled out of Kenya in 1963 and brought back to London. The judge ordered the release of this long-hidden “secret” cache, some 1,500 files.

The evidence of torture revealed in these documents was devastating. In the detention camps of colonial Kenya, a tough regime of physical and mental abuse of suspects was implemented from 1957 onward, as part of a government policy to induce detainees to obey orders or to make confessions.

The documents showed that responsibility for torture went right to the top — sanctioned by Kenya’s governor, Evelyn Baring, and authorized at cabinet level in London by Alan Lennox-Boyd, then secretary of state for the colonies in Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government.

Colonial Brutality Revisited: "Atoning for the Sins of Empire"

6/14/2013 04:48:00 PM africa, history, human rights, war and peace