Why Sub-Saharan Africa is Mired in Poverty: The Consequences of Misrule

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Year:
Pages:380
ISBN:0-7734-5149-8
978-0-7734-5149-0
Price:$239.95 + shipping
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This interdisciplinary critique is an attempt to move the debate over Africa’s economic plight beyond the traditional focus of ‘externalities,’ informed by the author’s belief that the region will only develop if critical attention is focused on its core impediment. The author proposes a way forward based on the oft-forgotten human rights instrument. In doing so, the discourse transcends the realms of economics into the domain of law - with its traditional emphasis on rights and obligations.

Reviews

“For Dr. Effeh ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in ourselves . . .’ He refuses to accept that the responsibility for general African poverty lies outside the continent. Africa has been subjected to systematic economic rape, often with the connivance of powerful non-African governments and transnational corporations, but crucially made possible only by deplorably and utterly corrupt African ‘statesmen’.” - Professor Wade Mansell, Kent Law School, University of Kent, Canterbury

“The great strength lies in the challenge to prevailing orthodoxy on the underlying reasons for current overall problems in the region. This is in tandem with Dr, Effeh’s unique and distinctive synergy, and focus on interdisciplinary issues of international political economy, development economics and international law. In this context, the work is truly groundbreaking, and will become a significant point of reference in the area.” – Professor Alan Reed, Editor, The Journal of Criminal Law; Professor of Criminal Law and Private International Law, Sunderland Business School, Sunderland University

“This study will be useful to activists and scholars in their struggle for social equality and for the recognition of a right to real development.” - Farid Samir Benavides Vanegas, Professor, Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Políticas, Univeridad Nacional de Colombia

" Effeh does not presume to have the answers to Africa's problems, but draws on his own research in 2003 to highlight the most significant obstacle to economic emancipation, though doing so means challenging orthodoxy's enduring emphasis on so-called externalities." Book News

Table of Contents

Foreword (Professor Wade Mansell)
Acknowledgements
List of Acronyms and Common Terms
Case List
Introduction
1 Globalization, Africa and Economic and Social Rights
2 Economic and Social Rights as Legal Rights
3 An Ominous Beginning: From Independence to Debt
4 The International Financial Institutions and Human Rights Violations in Sub-Saharan Africa
5 The International Financial Institutions and Human Rights
6 The Multilateral Trading Regime and Human Rights in Africa
7 Transnational Corporations in Africa: Some Human Rights Considerations
8 Transnational Corporations and Human Rights: Towards a Mandatory International Regulatory Regime?
9 The African Human Rights System: How to Undermine International Human Rights Norms
10 The Impediment of Misrule
11 The Way Forward: Towards a Development Model of Africa
12 Will Africans Ever Enjoy Economic and Social Rights?
Declaration on the Right of Development
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Bibliography
Index

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