Anti-Terrorism and Human Rights Protection in Africa
31 Pages Posted: 25 Jul 2014
Date Written: July 23, 2014
Abstract
This paper examines the conceptions of human rights and terrorism, and narrows these conceptions to the contestations that have characterized the African political landscape in recent times. It further situates African human rights system within the context of Africa’s historical realities in slave trade, colonialism and post-colonial governance conundrum. This thinking deconstructs the interconnections between anti-terrorism and human rights protection, and explains the ambivalence of peace and security in the continent. In reviewing the underlying scuffles grounding generations of human rights, especially the demarcations and/or dichotomy between civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights, the paper insists on the granting of the latter. This is because while current Africa’s anti-terrorism mechanisms seemed to be influenced by the former, terrorism feeds on the non-justiciability of the latter to indoctrinate and recruit foot soldiers. Hence, it is recommended that Africa should strengthen its human rights regime to encapsulate economic, social and cultural rights as an effective preventive and responsive antiterrorism tool.
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