Abstract
The article examines the roots of the conception of human rights in Sub-Saharan Africa and highlights some aspects of African human rights policies, considering some strengths and weaknesses, whilst drawing a realistic portrayal about the situation of universal human rights implementation in the continent. The paper demonstrates how African human rights priorities are translated into practice within the UN system in general and the UN Human Rights Council in particular. Besides the strong regional characteristics of Sub-Saharan African human rights policy, there are significant differences among states in the region towards approaches for addressing contemporary human rights challenges.
Highlights
There is not one single Asian, African, Arab, or Latin American perspective on human rights
This article intends to depict the aforementioned dilemma for African states regarding how they should approach the international human rights system, especially in cases when it is difficult to reconcile the universal standards with local norms
The court ruled that the customary law contravened constitutional guarantees of equality for men and women, and it noted that “culture changes with time.”[94]. Despite all these positive changes, there are several concerns about the African human rights system, namely the lack of necessary resources and political backing to make a real difference, organizational and financial challenges of the African Union (AU), the inefficiency of the system due to its huge number of institutions, toothless implementation and enforcement mechanisms, differing approaches with respect to the domestication of ratified international instruments, and the failure of countries to comply with reporting requirements of ratified instruments
Summary
There is not one single Asian, African, Arab, or Latin American perspective on human rights. The second part of this article analyzes how different human rights policies of the countries in the region are manifested in a multilateral context, demonstrating that, notwithstanding the common priorities of the continent, there are significant differences among the approaches of Sub-Saharan African states regarding the most important human rights challenges of our contemporary world. Somalia, Djibouti, Comoros, and Mauritania are geographically in Sub-Saharan Africa, they are Arab states The review of the work of the Sub-Saharan African states in the UN Human Rights Council offers a clear and comprehensive picture of how they reconcile their local values with universal standards in light of the complicated human rights development process in the region. The reference to special cultural values in order not to follow universal standards is invalid; this practice is only used by the political elite of a given country to legitimize the human rights violations committed in order to keep their power
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