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Discrimination in the Name of Religious Freedom: The Rights of Women and Non-Muslims after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan
Full text linkGovernment policy since independence has by and large disregarded Sudan’s multi-religious character through continuous Islamisation and Arabisation processes that have fuelled the civil war. International considerations regarding religious pluralism and the accommodation of different religious communities were at the forefront in the peace negotiations. The study outlines Islamic actors’ perception of non-Muslims’ rights after the comprehensive peace agreement (2005), including the rights of apostates. Also, the study elaborates how non-Muslims themselves perceive their rights within the frame of Islam.
In their eagerness to include marginalised religious groups, Sudanese and international peacebuilders ignored gender issues during the negotiations. In the name of religious freedom, the CPA and the national interim constitution have left the civil rights of women to the country’s religious communities – Islamic, Christian, and traditional African beliefs. Muslim and non-Muslim leaders alike perceive this as an intrinsic religious right. Civil rights such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, maintenance and financial custody of children, and alimony are perhaps the most tangible and important in the daily lives of “ordinary” Sudanese women. Yet, the CPA and the national interim constitution have not defined how the religious and tribal family laws that regulate women’s civil rights are being and should be formed and applied in today’s Sudan. Sudanese woman are granted different civil rights depending on which religious or tribal community they belong to. This study outlines the main discriminatory features in what has become a complicated patchwork of plural legalities for Sudanese women since the peace agreement.
Religiously defined laws in and by themselves are not necessarily discriminatory against women, but this plural legal system does not guarantee all Sudanese women equal civil rights as enforced in today’s Sudan. The study shows that there are ongoing debates within the religious communities towards maintaining or changing the discriminatory features of religious and tribal family laws. Despite the fact that most Sudanese elite women deem their current “rights status” as discriminatory, they do not demand a secular law on women’s civil rights. They promote “changing from within” by reinterpreting and transforming the religious and tribal laws in a more gender equal direction
Democratization of a Dependent State: The Case of Afghanistan
Full text linkThe post-Taliban democratic reforms in Afghanistan were in part a recreation of the past. Afghanistan has had six constitutions between 1923 and 1990, and most provided for national assemblies and elections in one form or other. Yet the degree of foreign involvement in the last reform process was unprecedented.
The heavy foreign hand contradicted the promise of national autonomy, representation and fair process held out by the democratization agenda. By implicitly devaluing the institutions it sought to promote, the democratization process has also had potentially counterproductive effects. Moreover, while promoting democratization, Western governments simultaneously created a state so dependent on external support that it deprived the critical institution of liberal democracy – the legislature – of its meaning. The logical response of the national assembly has been to mostly engage in politics with symbolic or nuisance value. The article focuses on three areas of political reform: the structuring of the interim administration, the promulgation of a new constitution, and the establishment of the legislature
Corruption in Serbia 2007. Overview of Problems and Status of Reforms
Full text linkCorruption is one of the most important problems facing Serbia. While there are some indications that corruption may have become less rampant in recent years, available evidence suggests that corruption levels are still high, while trust in key institutions is low. The impact on citizens is significant: day-to-day corruption can put a substantial strain on the poorest and most marginalized groups, while frequent scandals involving corruption among highest public officials undermines people’s, particularly young citizens’, confidence in the future.
Serbia is a country in transition. It is important to tackle corruption systematically to avoid its becoming institutionalised. However, while good news and perceptions are thin on the ground, we find that the country is on a positive track in several areas: there are signs of greater control of public procurement, conflict of interest has begun to be regulated, access to information and transparency of the government institutions have improved significantly, and the capacity of enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute organised crime and corruption is increasing. The burden of rules and procedures has eased for private business, cutting opportunities for corruption.
However, the political nature of the problem is constant, and more ambitious reforms are often effectively blocked by entrenched elites. A lasting impact on corruption levels cannot be achieved without sustained political will at the highest levels of government
Gendered Citizenship in Sudan: Competing Perceptions of Women's Civil Rights within the Family Laws among Northern and Southern Elites in Khartoum
Full text linkIn classical political thought, citizenship is a gender-neutral abstract personhood. This concept does not travel well when discussing the citizenship of women in the Middle East and Northern Africa. In Sudan, women’s civil rights are formed and applied by the religious communities—Islamic, Christian, and traditional African beliefs – thereby creating a gendered citizenship that not only has led to the absence of “equality before the law” between men and women in general but also between Sudanese women across religious and tribal affiliation. In contrast to the general literature on women’s rights and Sudan, which focuses on Islamic family law exclusively, I conduct a comparative study of the competing perceptions of women’s civil rights among northern and southern elites who practice Islamic family law and traditional laws in Khartoum. The findings suggest that the traditional laws provide fewer women’s civil rights than Islamic family law. I argue further that changing the gendered structure of the traditional family laws from within is more difficult for southern Sudanese women, because traditional laws are oral not written and no associated state authority can negotiate new rights. The lack of codification thwarts change. This qualitative study is based on primary sources in Arabic and English as well as semi-structured interviews conducted in Khartoum in November 2006 and February-March 2007 with members of northern and southern Sudanese elites
Sociedade Civil em Angola: Incursões, Espaco Responsabilidade
Full text linkCivil society is inherently weak in Angola, and the political and societal space for civil society is limited. Angolan authorities have not fully accepted civil society’s voice, watchdog and control functions, and the legal framework is restrictive. Most organisations are careful in their approach to and in their contact with government. There is a tangible fear of backlash, based on previous negative experiences.
NGOs explicitly and directly working on issues of governance, transparency and democracy, including public finance management, are all very small, having a limited membership base, and they are dependent on foreign funding. Except for a few human rights organisations, NGOs working on good governance and public finance are still embryonic in Angola.
Larger NGOs with a solid membership base, international backing and broad legitimacy in Angolan society and government, all have main priority working areas different from public finance management and state budgets. This makes them reluctant to engage in political matters, except for on carefully delineated issues that directly affect their core constituencies (like budget allocations to local areas), and with carefully chosen counterparts in (local) government agencies.
The tendency towards organisational networking is comparatively strong in Angola. Almost all NGOs are members of several organisational networks, through which they work not only for the benefit of their members, organisations and organisational space in general, but also on issues that relates to good governance and government transparency. Although some of these networks have been evolving towards being organisations on their own, the networking trend is very positive, sometimes politically significant, and should be supported.
The Angolan government seems to take CSO and NGO pressure seriously only when it is concerted, based on a larger number of organisations, and involving international NGOs and media. At the same time, the regime is not monolithic, and inroads to more accommodating ministries and government representatives do exist. Multiple and various channels must be employed for NGOs to be heard.
In order to have an impact on public finance management, transparent budgeting and pro-poor budgets, Angolan CSOs will need more elaborated knowledge and “budget literacy”. This can be enhanced for instance through international partnerships for inspiration, information and training
The Resource Curse: Which Institutions Matter?
Full text linkTwo types of models are dominant in the current resource curse literature. One type of model studies the selection of entrepreneurs into rent-seeking versus productive activities. The other type analyzes the use of patronage by politicians seeking re-election. The policy implications of the two models are quite different. The first model suggests that institutions governing the private sector ought to be improved. The second that institutions governing the public sector should be emphasized. This paper empirically tests the impact of the private versus public sector institutions on the resource curse, using cross-country data from Sachs and Warner (1997a) and Polity IV. The main result is that only improved private sector institutions ameliorate the resource curse
Asian Models for Aid: Is there a Non-Western Approach to Development Assistance? Summary record of seminar held in Oslo, December 2006
Full text linkThe expansion of the international donor community clearly challenges the current “consensus” of a new “harmonised” aid architecture, and calls for strategies on how to adjust to an aid landscape with greater plurality and variety, for recipients and donors alike. A first step for a donor like Norway is to ask what can be learned from the Asian donors on new or alternative forms of donorship. What can we learn from Japan’s extensive aid experience, but also from China and India which started south-south cooperation and aid programmes back in the early 1950s? Do they represent alternative thinking on what brings economic development and poverty reduction? Will this challenge some of the basic ideas underpinning the current emphasis of national poverty reduction strategies supported by the donor community? Such questions formed the background for a seminar arranged in Oslo, 5 December, 2006, with experts on Japan, China, India and South Korea. This report is a summary of the main messages and arguments
Taking the Paris Principles to Asia. A Study of Three Human Rights Commissions in Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines
Full text linkThe report studies three human rights commissions in Southeast Asia in light of the so-called Paris Principles. These principles are the authoritative guidelines for directing the work of national human rights institutions. Designed as agencies for both the promotion and protection of human rights, these entities occupy an important intermediate position between the state and civil society. They are to serve as public watchdogs over the state and to be accessible to the public at large as agencies investigating complaints about state wrongdoing and as sources of education and training for raising human rights awareness.
The report makes an assessment of the legal mandate, composition, independence, operational priorities and to the extent possible, the effectiveness and impact of the three commissions in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Although the assessment finds that the three fulfil the requirements of the Paris Principles, there is still considerable room for improvement for all three. All three commissions are also found to vary in significant respects and this variation is sought summarised in a concluding table. Finally, some recommendations are made as to how the performance of the commissions can be bettered.
The general weakness of the commissions is that their mandates are not as encompassing as they should be and that they have few powers to make sure that their recommendations are followed once they are submitted to the relevant government authority. The strict separation between the commissions and the courts also derives the commissions of any judicial function
When Neighbours Become Killers: Ethnic Conflict and Communal Violence in Western Uganda
Full text linkAcross Africa land rights conflicts are escalating between indigenous and migrant ethnic groups. This paper analyses the communal violence that took place in connection with an ethnicised land redistribution in Western Uganda in 2004. The paper specifically employs the term communal violence to analyse a situation where neighbours became killers. Since the concept is rarely used in African ethnography, the paper draws on theoretical developments and empirical contributions concerning communal violence in South Asia.
Looking at the wider political context, the paper traces the processes from conflict to communal violence. It argues that rather than being irrational and incomprehensible, communal represented a particular form of meaningful action. It foregrounds the role of rumours to show how when ethnicised they play a vital part in the formation of a common moral imagination as well shaping the direction of social processes between ethnic groups. The paper argues that rumours are not simply a response to ethnic contention but constitutive of it. Moreover, this constitution is productive of communal violence.
This paper is based on fieldwork conducted in Kibaale District, Uganda during the spring of 2003
Human Rights and Assigned Duties: Implications for Corporations
Full text linkHuman rights imply duties. The question is, duties for whom? Without a welldefined scheme for assigning duties correlative to human rights, these rights remain illusory. This paper develops core elements of a general scheme of duty assignment, and studies the implications for corporations. A key distinction in such an assignment is between unconditional and conditional duties. Unconditional duties apply to every agent regardless of the conduct of others. Conditional duties reflect a division of moral labour where different tasks are assigned to specific agents, whose default activates back-up duties of other agents. Corporations face unconditional duties to not directly violate the rights of others, and not undermine the division of moral labour through practices such as tax evasion or corruption. Being unconditional, these duties cannot be deviated from by reference to the misconduct of competitors. In addition, corporate conditional duties to protect, promote or fulfil rights can be activated if the state and other designated duty-bearers fail to discharge their duties