Africa: Outdated Representations Continue to Deny Women Autonomy of Their “Personhood”

It is underlined in the article, that fixing of the wide complex of civil and political rights in the constitutions of the countries of former USSR in the 1990s, its complete realization, and proper protection did not become possible. The facts of media controllableness, infringements upon independence of the judiciary, pressure on the “third factor”, prosecution of human rights defenders, spreading of hate speech and even capital punishment practice certify that. The institute of the state as well as non-state subjects are noted to be the initiators of pressure on political and civil rights and freedoms. This is stated to separate post-Soviet countries from values of neo-liberal democracy, what is typical under conditions of neo-authoritarian political regimes, defective democracies, etc. In the article, the latest trends in the functioning of the Institute of Civil and Political Rights and Freedoms in Belarus and Russia are revealed. We state that despite the constitutional consolidation of a wide range of civil and political rights and freedoms in the countries of the former USSR in the 1990s, still their full implementation and proper protection are lacking. The author’s argumentation is based on the proven facts of media control, the infringement against judicial independence, pressure on civil society, persecution of human rights defenders, the rise of hate speech, which are inherent to Belarus and Russia. In the article, it is stated that the main movers of pressure on civil and political rights and freedoms in the analyzed countries are both state institutions and non-state actors (pseudo-civil society). The main problem in upholding the inviolability of constitutionally guaranteed civil and political rights is the lack of a sufficiently critical mass of citizens, who are ready for systemic change, and the weakness of national civil societies.

Corruption, a pervasive and destructive phenomenon, has far-reaching implications for civil and political rights. This paper examines corruption’s legal effects on civil and political rights, focusing on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) 1966. It also studies corruption and the ICCPR 1966 to highlight the challenges and legal solutions to fighting corruption while protecting civil and political rights. The conceptual framework explains corruption, civil and political rights, and the ICCPR 1966. Corruption, the abuse of power for personal gain, undermines the principles of the ICCPR 1966, such as freedom of expression, political participation, fair and impartial judiciary, and access to effective remedies. This study shows how corruption affects these rights and democratic institutions, public trust, and good governance. The instances of Brazil’s Operation Car Wash and Ukraine’s Euromaidan Movement serve as influential case studies, demonstrating the damaging impact of corruption on civil and political rights. Furthermore, this study analyzes legal strategies and outcomes in combating corruption. It emphasizes international cooperation, judicial transparency, preventative measures, and surveillance and prosecutorial capabilities. Operation Car Wash in Brazil and the Ukrainian anti-corruption reforms are effective anti-corruption and civil rights endeavors. The ICCPR 1966 and The United Nation Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) are also examined in the research. Regional and national instruments show the multi-layered strategy needed to fight corruption and preserve civil and political rights. This study’s findings provide policy suggestions for protecting political and civil liberties from the corrupt government. There is a call to action to improve legal frameworks, increase judicial independence and accountability, foster a culture of integrity and ethics, empower civil society and the media, guarantee effective remedies, and implement international instruments.

Kodanikuõiguste peatükk Eesti 1919. aasta ajutises põhiseaduses [Abstract: Civil Rights Chapter in Estonia’s 1919 Preliminary Constitution

Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

This article studies if and under which circumstances Western support to regimes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is contingent on concerns for political and civil rights. Using foreign aid as a proxy for support, we compare the role of political and civil rights with the role of different geopolitical and economic factors for aid allocation. We analyse French and US aid flows to 12 MENA countries, covering the period from 1990–2005. We find that, for both countries, strategic concerns are highly relevant for aid allocation; civil and political rights also matter, but only in places of no strategic value. Thus, although French and US foreign aid goes to different countries, the underlying motives are remarkably similar. Finally, to the extent that there is a difference between the two countries, France fairs worse than even US military aid regarding the consideration of civil and political liberties.

The emergence of the civil rights policy regime during the 1960s in the U.S. formalized the transition from the pre–civil rights era to the civil rights era. As we see in this paper, the subsequent post–civil rights era has been shaped by increasing challenges against principles of civil rights law, chiefly by political conservatives. Indeed, opponents have had significant success in undermining key parts of the civil rights policy regime. Conservatives and others have sought to usher in an era of “color-blind” policy. Basic civil and political rights were thought by most to be questions of “settled law” in the aftermath of the relatively successful civil rights movement. However, “color blind” political opposition has challenged this assumption. Ironically, this means that there is a yet unsuccessful battle to cement foundational civil and political rights in the United States. Following Marshall, this further deters the development of more egalitarian social rights.

The doctrinal and normative legal definitions of the concept of human civil rights, as well as national guarantees for the provision of civil rights, their types and possible ways of improvement are considered in the article. The authors analyze the concept, legal and philosophical basis of the implementation of human rights in the international and national aspect, relying on the texts of international documents, as well as the scientific research of foreign and Ukrainian scientists in the fields of the theory of the state and law, international law and constitutional law. The authors believe that the concept of human rights and, in particular, human civil rights, has not been unchanged throughout its history, and if at the first stages of its development it was connected with a person's belonging to the state ("citizenship"), it gradually almost lost this connection . An analysis of the modern meaning of the concept of "civil rights" shows that the modern Ukrainian translation of the title of the 1966 Covenant: "International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights" is misleading, ambiguous and does not reflect the essence of the concept of "civil human rights" in international context. There is a possibility that Ukrainian legal science will find another equivalent of the term "civil rights" in the sense of basic human rights. As a possible option, a fairly meaningful replacement option is offered - "fundamental (essential) human rights and freedoms according to P.M. Rabinovych. The authors draw attention to the fact that the concept of national guarantees of ensuring civil rights is not always given by scientists. To them in the broad sense should be attributed state, that is, which belong to this country and concern its people, reflect its character, features and social activity, positively acting conditions and means that ensure their actual implementation. Since the natural rights of a person and a citizen, enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine, are not exhaustive, an important guarantee of the protection of these rights should become a modern understanding of spiritual values. Keywords: civil rights, natural rights, basic civil rights, fundamental (essential) human rights and freedoms, national guarantees of ensuring civil rights.

This article deals with the civil and political rights in the press of the news websites, aims to identify the civil and political rights in the press discourse of the top news websites and newspapers in Britain. Between March-August 2022, a tool that includes the civil and political rights was prepared under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 16, 1976 and became effective on March 23, 1976. In order to ensure the validity and reliability of the tool, Test-retest and Factor Analysis were conducted and the needed changes were applied, while to obtain the results; frequency, averages and percentages were utilized. Results have shown that the right to life spearheaded the percentages by (18.83%), followed by the right to equality (15.18%)—which is a civil right; then the economic rights (12.04%); and the social rights (10.34%). On the other hand, the political rights like the right of protest and peaceful demonstration (1.39%), the right to stand for elections (0.99%) and the freedom of association (0.57%) obtained the less percentages.

“Down Where the South Begins”: Black Richmond Activism before the Modern Civil Rights Movement, 1899–1930

In this essay, I argue that Ernest Gaines’s (1971) The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman deploys black freedom struggles as points of departure to elucidate the shortcomings of what I theorize as exodus politics. I employ the phrase “exodus politics” to articulate the political strategy African Americans have invoked to argue for civil and political rights, including defining civil rights as pertaining only or primarily to “racial rights” and idealizing black men as the necessary “leaders” for civil rights attainment. Situating Gaines within the context of his contemporaries, I deploy civil rights historian Belinda Robnett’s notions of bridge and formal leadership to demonstrate how Gaines’s historical fiction serves as an early corrective to the masculinization of civil rights, civil rights leadership, and even the civil rights movement. While Gaines rightfully invokes the explicit and implicit measures white people took to abrogate black people’s civil rights, his text might be better understood as challenging black people to eschew their long-standing tradition of exodus politics because adhering to such a tradition has been counterproductive to civil rights attainment for black men and black women. By emphasizing male formal leadership, African American communities not only have failed to recognize the importance, necessity, and complexity of female bridge leadership, but also have bound the civil rights movement’s longevity to a small cadre of male leaders. Shifting the gaze from formal leadership to bridge leadership and conceptualizing civil rights as always already intertwined with issues of race and gender (and class and sexuality), The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman rightfully helps readers to conceptualize models of black politics and leadership that consider the varying political interests that exist within African American communities.

This chapter examines how effective the protection of civil and political rights under the African Charter has been in Africa in the thirty years since the adoption of the African Charter in 1981. It explores how the African Commission has dealt with the criticisms highlighted above and the effectiveness of the Commission's approach. The chapter considers the impact of the African Charter at a domestic level in civil and political rights litigation and identifies some obstacles to respect, protect and promote civil and political rights in Africa. The use of the African Charter by some domestic courts in Africa in interpreting and applying domestic law is also encouraging. The system has moved very far from where it started 30 years ago and has moved progressively in the right direction. Keywords:African Charter; African Commission; civil rights; domestic law; political rights

This chapter shows the impact of the division of the human rights agenda, and it seeks to portray the regimes for civil and political rights as they have evolved out of that first discussion at international level about the efficacy of human rights between 1948 and 1966. The chapter is divided into three parts. It discusses the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The chapter examines few key rights from the Covenant in a bid to show the parameters of the rights identified as 'civil and political'; it also offers a commentary on the challenges for implementation. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights could be understood as the codification of the civil and political rights aspirations expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, into legally binding provisions. Keywords: civil rights; international covenant; political rights

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the relation between parents' rights and children's rights took shape in the drafting of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, with a special interest for this relation in the matter of education. By means of the perspective elaborated by T. H. Marshall of citizenship rights as composed of civil, political, and social rights, questions about what kind of right education is and who owns the right to education is addressed. The main empirical source used in the analysis is the UN working group's annual reports, which account for the process in which the different articles were formed. The analysis shows that the main challenge to emerge during the drafting process with regard to the relation between the rights of parents and their children seems to be that of a balancing of the civil and political rights of the child and the civil rights of the parents. In the working group's discussions about education the social right of the child to education was confronted with, and stood against, the civil right of the parents. The wording of Article 28 on the right to education changed several times during the drafting, and in the final version the contradictions that had been present in the elaboration process concerning the rights of the child and the rights of parents in the matter of education became invisible, since the article only expresses the social right of the child to education.

Reviewed by: Bringing Human Rights Home: A History of Human Rights in the United States Dean J. Kotlowski, Professor of History (bio) Bringing Human Rights Home: A History of Human Rights in the United States (Cynthia Soohoo, Catherine Albrisa, & Martha F.Davis eds., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 411 pages, ISBN 9780812220797. The United States government has waltzed its way through and around the issue of human rights in a "three-part dance of ambivalence, rejection, and embrace."1 That is the thesis of this collection of essays, and it is remarkably consistent, coherent, and convincing. During World War II, the government in Washington championed a holistic vision that promised protection for social and economic rights as well as political and civil rights. But such advocacy, enunciated in the Atlantic Charter (1941), President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" address (1941), and FDR's espousal of an "Economic Bill of Rights" (1944), became a casualty of the early postwar era, when the Soviet Union was keen to castigate the injustices—principally racial—that afflicted American life. Moreover, many Americans, influenced in part by the Cold War, narrowly defined human rights as involving an individual's right to expression, association, and political participation. They were reluctant to tackle issues relating to class for fear of being labeled un-patriotic. In this setting, the US government for decades delayed ratifying international conventions to safeguard social and economic (as well as political) rights. Following the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, a new day seemed to dawn as the United States Senate approved the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Interestingly, the events of 11 September 2001 and subsequent practices of the administration of George W. Bush with respect to alien deportations, rendition, rough interrogation, and torture served to galvanize human rights activists. One result has been a wider, richer, and more varied movement to protect the dignity of all people. But as the contributors to this volume also suggest, much work remains to be done. As a historian, I was most interested in the first part of Bringing Human Rights Home, in which Paul Gordon Lauren, Elizabeth Borgwardt, Carol Anderson, and Hope Lewis trace the history of America's encounter with human rights. They illustrate that the US government's engagement with this issue has been a recent phenomenon, centered in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The story they tell is neither one of linear progress nor of sin and redemption but of advocacy followed by avoidance. After World War II, the idealism of the Four Freedoms crashed against hard, political realities. In a nod to Jim Crow, US diplomat John Foster Dulles amended the charter of the United Nations (UN) so as to deny that organization's authority over "matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the State concerned."2 Southern Democrats on Capitol Hill were pleased that the UN would have no say—or sway—over their system of racial segregation. In 1953, Dulles, then Secretary of State, went further when he abandoned efforts to seek ratification of the Convention on Civil [End Page 1218] and Political Rights and the Convention on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in exchange for Senate votes to kill the so-called Bricker Amendment, a measure to restrict the president's ability to secure ratification of treaties. Perhaps the most paradoxical of these policymakers was Eleanor Roosevelt. As a US delegate to the UN under President Harry S. Truman, she helped draft the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. And, yet, when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) asked the UN Commission on Human Rights to investigate the conditions of African Americans, the former First Lady opposed their appeal and briefly resigned from the NAACP's board of directors. Eleanor Roosevelt, like many Americans, also proved uneasy with the redistributive implications of protecting social and political rights; at one point, she denied that countries were obligated "to assure the enjoyment of these rights by direct government action."3 Such a bifurcated perspective, from a purported friend of...

Claiming the right to health