Foundations of Human Rights and Development: A Critique of African Human Rights Instruments

Abstract

Does a tendency exist, on the part of the international community in general and the African Union in particular, to seek financial progress at grave sacrifice; such as allowing a utilitarian approach to relegate individual dignity to secondary importance? Is it possible to attain fiscal solvency while remaining deeply rooted in a sound and consistent human rights ethic? Numerous issues influence monetary policy, to wit: HIV/AIDS, population control, starvation, disease, economic dumping, imperialism, mandates accompanying loans, and ethnic conflicts. This paper argues that establishing meaningful and sustainable economic progress necessitates reconfiguring in some respects the fundamental premises for African human rights instruments, and to that end it proposes the natural law, as opposed to legal positivistic and other utilitarian, premises which only exacerbate rather than ameliorate challenges to African economic development.

Keywords: natural law, human rights, positivism, utilitarian, Africa