Human Rights

It is not the Corona Virus that brought troubles to and exposed the inadequacies of county public health services.  Before Covid-19, county governments were widely criticized for their lack of hospital beds capacity, quality of health care and the treatment of healthcare workers.  Discouraged by poor conditions of work and remuneration, and after a prolonged nationwide strike, healthcare givers left county public healthcare service in droves

Financial institutions should focus on the positive opportunities and learning experiences from this pandemic and plan how they will help their member states adjust to the effects of COVID-19 and attain sustainable development thereafter. This step will be in line with the World Bank’s advice on planning for the economic recovery from COVID-19, in the bid for nations to restart their economic engines and build back stronger and better in the short term and longer term.

It is clear that at both national and international level there is work being done to revise copyright law for digital contexts and that the pandemic has impressed upon us how important such work is. There are no suitable limitations and exceptions in South Africa’s copyright law to meet emergency demands and existing licensing agreements were not equal to the task either. Hence the need for the emergency measures outlined above. So, to bring my musings to a close, in my view Copyright Law is not supportive of emergency remote teaching in its current form and reform is urgently needed.

Afronomicslaw.org is pleased to introduce the Afronomicslaw Academic Forum and to welcome a New Editor and three contributing editors effective immediately.

Afronomicslaw.org, the blog on International Economic Law Issues as they relate to the Global South is pleased to invite essay submissions  on International Economic Law topics relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The current attention to sustainability challenges in Nigeria presents a good opportunity for policy makers to review the extant company legislation in Nigeria and incorporate CSR provisions suitable to the nation’s cultural and economic context. The aim of CSR regulation is to use the market economy to finance and achieve sustainable development. The purpose of the company should be redefined to serve all the constituents, not only the community, but also employees, customers and investors.

There is a new struggle for Africa’s market. The contestants include the European Union (EU), United States (US), Russia, India and China. In this blog, I reflect on the new European Union -Africa Comprehensive Strategy proposals. The blog pushes against the Strategy’s revision of the historical relationship between the two regions which is built on embedded inequality. This is because, to be a true partnership, the unequal nature of the relationship between the EU and Africa must be centered. In the contest for its market, Africa has a unique opportunity to harness the competition tactically.

One group of women should be celebrated for their contributions to shaping the emancipation narratives and processes on the continent. This is the group of African female scholars such as Professor Celestine Nyamu-Musembi, Professor Sylvia Tamale, Professor Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Professor Ambreena Manji and Professor Sylvia Kang’ara. The perspectives of these scholars play a crucial role in shaping interventions targeted at women in Africa. As the English saying goes, only the wearer of the shoe knows where it pinches. International organizations seeking to emancipate women must pay close attention to the scholarship of these women. Their rich body of scholarship provides useful insights that intervention documents drawn up in the development cities of Geneva and New York may lack.

Scholars tend to participate in the International Investment Law (IIL) and human rights debate using a thorough knowledge and expertise of their respective legal disciplines. In addition, they frame this discussion within the paradigms privileged by each legal community. Nevertheless, the problem with cross-disciplinarity in research and discourse is that IIL and human rights scholarship subordinates “the other” field of research to its own approaches and methods and in doing so, both reduce its counterpart’s receptiveness towards the IIL reforms they consider appropriate depending on their understanding of what IIL should be.

As social movements and civil society continues to seek support within international law in their claims for justice, the reflection on the absence of international corporate accountability mechanisms is an open field for human rights discourse dispute.