Abstract
A communitarian perspective, which is characteristic of African normative thought, accords some kind of primacy to society or a group, whereas human rights are by definition duties to treat individuals in certain ways, even when not doing so would be better for society. Is there any place for human rights in an Afro-communitarian political and legal philosophy, and, if so, what is it? I seek to answer these questions, in part by critically exploring one of the most influential theoretical works on human rights in a sub-Saharan setting, namely, Claude Ake’s ‘The African Context of Human Rights’. Ake famously maintains that a typically Western approach to rights is inappropriate in the sub-Saharan region, in two major respects. First, Ake contends that although a human rights legal framework might be suitable for an ‘individualistic’ society, it is not for one of the sort common among traditional black peoples, for whom group rights are most apt. Second, Ake maintains that, insofar as rights are relevant, rights to socio-economic goods are of much more importance in an African context than rights to civil liberties, due process and the like. Using Ake’s article as a foil, I draw on values salient in sub-Saharan moral worldviews to construct a unified philosophy of rights that not only provides reason to doubt his two claims, but also offers a promising way to reconcile a communitarian framework with a robust prizing of human rights alongside ones that are more collectively oriented. In short, I aim to provide a principled foundation for the core elements of the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Note that I do not seek to engage with the corpus of Ake’s work.
- 3.
- 4.
For a brief summary of some of the anthropological research and my judgment about what it shows, see Metz (2012a).
- 5.
- 6.
See Metz (2007), from which next few paragraphs borrow.
- 7.
Setting aside highly contested metaphysical claims to the effect that, say, one is always already in community with spiritual beings such as God and ancestors.
- 8.
Some of the analysis of human rights is taken from other, recent work (Metz 2010, 2011a, b, 2012b, c), while the discussion of group rights is entirely new; the major contribution of this article is to demonstrate how both human and peoples’ rights plausibly have a common, African source in the dignity of our capacity for community.
- 9.
Or are capable of flourishing, a view that Ake might favour in light of his apparent adherence to an ‘interest’ theory of rights, as discussed below in Sect. 7.6.
- 10.
A strategy executed by Howard (1983, pp. 482–490), who invokes the value of moral integrity.
- 11.
An issue that goes beyond Ake’s concern that appealing to rights implies an atomized conceptions of oneself.
- 12.
For comments on this and related work, I thank Oche Onazi and Oritsegbubemi Tony Oyowe.
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Metz, T. (2014). African Values, Human Rights and Group Rights: A Philosophical Foundation for the Banjul Charter. In: Onazi, O. (eds) African Legal Theory and Contemporary Problems. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 29. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7537-4_7
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