1,151 research outputs found
African Migration, Human Rights and Literature, written by Fareda Banda
No full textBook review of Fareda Banda, African Migration, Human Rights and Literature, Oxford:
Hart Publishing 2020, ISBN 978150993835
African Gender Equalities
No full textThis is a story about struggles for equality fought on three frontiers. The first frontier was a continent-wide struggle for political liberation from colonialism and apartheid. In common with women in countless liberation struggles, African women had to confront colonial racism in concert with African men while simultaneously addressing intersectional race and gender discrimination from colonial officials and also gender discrimination within their own communities.[i] The second phase of the struggle, which is ongoing, is been about the fight by African women to be unshackled from the chains of sex and gender-based discrimination by demanding legal change while also confronting gender based stereotypes within their societies. The third, also in train, involves challenges to gender discrimination in the allocation of national economic resources. It also involves confronting global inequalities which sees the resources of African peoples exploited, depleted and misused by their own States and by external actors. It requires African and other governments to take a more gendered approach to resource use and distribution while also minimising exploitation of both people and the environment. This chapter concentrates on the last two through the prism of the African human rights frameworks
Family relationships in Italy after the 2016 reform: the new provisions on civil unions and cohabitation
No full textItalian family law has always adapted ex post to the social changes already in place, aligning with extreme delay to foreign legislations. This was the case for the introduction of divorce, of shared parental responsibility and ultimately also for the regulation of same-sex unions and cohabiting relationships.
After a brief excursus on the major reforms in Italian family law, which entirely redesigned the Civil Code's structure of 1942, this paper examines the requests of the Italian Constitutional Court and of the domestic courts of first, second and third instance, as well as the recommendations of the European Court of Human rights and the doctrine to the legislature. These will eventually protect all family unions, regardless of the sexual orientation and gender identity of the partners.
Then follows the detailed analysis of the reform set out in Law No. 76/2016, of the unsolved legal issues devolved by the legislature to the discretion of the judiciary, and of those aspects (step-child adoption, adoption by same-sex couples and surrogacy) purposely neglected by the Law No. 76/2016, which immediately made the 2016 reform partially inadequate
“If You Buy a Cup, Why Would You Not Use It?” Marital Rape: The Acceptable Face of Gender Based Violence
No full textThere are cases that one never forgets. DPP v. Morgan is one of those for me. I read it as an eighteen-year-old in my first year of law school. It was in the criminal law class where we were being taught about rape. The facts left me shocked and outraged. Morgan went out drinking with his friends. At the end of the night, he invited the friends back to his house. He told them that they could have sex with his wife and added that they should not worry if she appeared to resist, because she liked it that way. The friends duly came over and helped themselves to his wife as per his instructions. Morgan also forced her to have sex with him despite her protestations. She experienced injuries which necessitated medical treatment. His friends were convicted of rape, but he was convicted of indecent assault. This seemed strange. Had they all not forced her to have sex with them despite her clearly expressed refusal? Why was he charged with a lesser crime? The reason was simple: he was her husband. Under the law as it then operated in England, there was no recognition of marital rape. Her consent to lifelong sex on demand, even if it was against her will, was taken as part of the contract of marriage. The words “I do” spoken at the time of the marriage, were taken to mean free access for the husband for as long as they both lived, or until the marriage was legally dissolved or a formal separation was in place.</jats:p
Gender and Human Rights
No full textGender is all the rage–rage meaning it is both a focus of attention and also anger. Human rights practitioners owe a debt of gratitude to development specialists who elaborated on the significance of gender as a category. For human rights purposes, the term gender can be linked to the intertwining of development with law and policy in the 1970s and specifically the UN Decade for Women from 1975–1985, which had as its goals equality, development and peace. While human rights treaties do not include gender as a protected category in their non-discrimination provisions, listing only sex, human rights treaty bodies have broadened the scope of their understanding of gender. The ‘family’ and its constitution has again become the site of the resistance in the ‘gender wars’
The Nebulous Lawmaking Process in Eritrea
No full textThis article contrasts the lawmaking process in the Eritrean transitional legal framework with experience in South Africa, which offers insightful lessons for future improvement in Eritrea. Indeed, the Eritrean lawmaking process retains many imperfections in terms of the design of the interim constitution and ensuing practice. On paper, the competence of the executive and the legislature is not clearly demarcated.
Rather, it is nebulously shared between both branches, resulting inevitably in competing interests. The lawmaking process lacks democratic characteristics and defies the requirements of accountability and good governance. The practice that has followed is worse. In a country with a protracted history of executive dominance, the lawmaking competence conferred upon the executive has inexorably
contributed to entrenched dictatorship. The article offers suggestions for improvement
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