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Engendering Human Rights: Cultural and Socio-Economic Realities in Africa.

Article Excerpt
Engendering Human Rights: Cultural and Socio-Economic Realities in Africa. Obioma Nnaemeka and Joy Ezeilo, eds. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 320 pp.

Nnameka and Ezeilo provide a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary overview of how context shapes the definition, interpretation, and enforcement of human rights in Africa. The focus of the book is on "engendering" or "developing and producing" human rights in Africa at a time when the universal notion of human rights presents an attractive solution to the problems plaguing postcolonial African states. While the focus of others working in this area, such as Bunch (1990) and Uvin (2004), has been on transforming theory and practice to incorporate feminist, rights-based approaches to development, this text moves the conversation forward by making the argument that the indivisibility of rights demands that attention be directed to cultural rights, socio-economic rights, and policy implementation in order to achieve universal human rights. While all citizens are entitled to human rights, all citizens do not have access to this entitlement. Nor is it always an appropriate...

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