Thesis (Ph.D. (Ethics))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Im Rahmen der alljährlichen Potsdamer Frühjahrsgespräche, die die Stiftung Entwicklung und Frieden in Kooperation mit WeltTrends durchführt, hatten wir Gelegenheit zu einem Gespräch mit dem ehemaligen Richter am Afrikanischen Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte und die Rechte der Völker, George W. Kanyeihamba aus Uganda.

Wie aus heiterem Himmel teilte US-Präsident Barack Obama mit, Osama bin Laden, der mutmaßlich Hauptverantwortliche für die Anschläge auf das World Trade Center in New York am 11. September 2001, sei durch US-Spezialkräfte erschossen worden. Ist nun der "Kampf der Kulturen" zu Ende? Dann der Hinweis, Osama sei schon zuvor politisch tot gewesen; die arabischen Revolutionen hätten den politischen Schwerpunkt auf Menschenrechte und Demokratie verlegt. Doch die Ermordung bin Ladens deutet eine andere Entwicklung an: Die Abschaffung von Freiheit und Menschenrechten im Namen von Freiheit und Menschenrechten.

<p>The aim of this research is to ask questions as to why child right laws for the protection of child soldiers have failed to protect children in the Darfur region of Sudan despite the<br /> fact that Sudan is a member to many of these children&rsquo / s rights instruments. Can conflict transformation therefore be of any help? This is research seeks to address the question posed above.</p>

<p>This research paper focuses on the legal protection of humanitarian workers. It refers to the experience of governmental organizations with a humanitarian vocation, and international humanitarian organizations, such as, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), active in more than 80 countries. The ICRC was created in order provide assistance and protection to wounded combatants,11 but its activity has gradually extended to include prisoners of war and civilians, territories. Also Medecin Sans Frontiere (MSF), functioning in more than 70 countries, was established to provide medical assistance to victims of conflicts or natural and other disasters.</p>

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States of America, there has been a shift in the policies of many countries to combat terrorism. Terrorism has had a devastating effect on many citizens of the world. These include „the enjoyment of the right to life, liberty and physical integrity of victims. In addition to these individual costs, terrorism can destabilise Governments, undermine civil society, jeopardise peace and security, and threaten social and economic development.‟1 All of these also had a real impact on the enjoyment of human rights. Therefore the fight to curb further terrorist attacks is paramount. States are charged with the responsibility of curbing terrorism by their citizens. But with responsibility comes obligations to the citizenry.2 States should therefore not engage in policies or actions that further deprive others of their enjoyment of human rights. This is well put by Hoffman when he says „history shows that when societies trade human rights for security, most often they get neither.

The onset of modernization, globalization and urbanization has begun to challenge the gender relationship between in Tanzania. Western influence and globalization factors such as religion, donor funds and mass media have propagated ideologies that have challenged and changed old rooted traditionalist ideas and created a power – knowledge struggle between males and females and older generations. Younger people are living a different lifestyle than their elders and are demanding more individualistic freedoms and are breaking away from cultural constructions such as the extended family. The aim of this study is to evaluate the gender policy of the male-centric sexual and reproductive programs called Young Men as Equal Partners (YMEP). The aim is to criticize the premise that male involvement sexual and reproductive health programs are the single best method to implement sustainable behavioural change. The raison d’être that these male involvement take for granted is that women generally are powerless to affect the behaviour of their partners, and are unable to negotiate with their partners to have safe sex or to change their behavioural patterns. The following study is a qualitative study, which uses semi-structured interviews conducted in secondary schools in Manyara Region in Tanzania as a method of data collection. The theory used in this study is social constructivism where empirical results from conducted interviews both individual and group interviews will be evaluated in the background of social constructivism. The conclusion of this study is that it is therefore imperative for the implementation of sustainable behavioural change that sexual and reproductive health programs do not only focus on single sex exclusion strategy which create knowledge-power gender inequalities, but rather it is more effective in order to implement sustainable sexual and reproductive behaviour change to include all the members of the community, and to tailor the program strategies to individual sexual and reproductive needs rather than focusing exclusively on one gender or social group.

As early as in 1915, 1931 and 1942, there were serious outbreaks of dengue fever occurred to the entire island of Taiwan. In 1942, there were five million people in the whole Taiwan infected with dengue fever. After the significant outbreaks of dengue fever in the entire Kaohsiung District of Taiwan Island in 1987 and 1988, except that the regional epidemics occurred in three places of Northern and Central Taiwan, namely Jhonghe City of Taipei County, Taichung City and Taipei City, all other regional outbreaks of dengue fever mostly occurred in Kaohsiung County or City, Tainan City and Pingtung County. Apparently, the epidemic situation of dengue fever has become an epidemic disease of Southern Taiwan, and gradually developed as a ¡§community disease¡¨ or ¡§environmental disease.¡¨ Coincidently, the year of 2006 was a peak period for the propagation of dengue fever. Under the circumstances that the number of dengue fever patients was getting higher and higher, both the government and the competent authorities took compulsory measures or epidemic prevention acts (such administrative acts as insecticide spraying against mosquitoes in residences after forceful unlocking of doors, emergency public spraying of chemicals against mosquitoes, taking blood tests, and so on). It seemed so obvious that the liberty of living, liberty of property and personal liberty, which are the basic rights of civilians under the protection of the Constitution, were involved. Besides, whenever dengue fever is epidemic, it is common to see conflicts (arguments) over the door unlocking and insecticide spraying problems frequently happened between the citizens and the government departments concerned. In the legal aspect, it is necessary to review whether these acts comply with the provisions of the Constitution. Apart from collecting the related local and foreign literatures to investigate the change of the administrative system of epidemic control, the study introduces the details of the three major directions in taking epidemic prevention measures against dengue fever in Taiwan, including such administrative and management acts as the preventive measures to be taken during the ordinary days, the epidemic control measures after receiving the report of dengue fever cases, and the epidemic prevention measures after the confirmation of dengue fever cases. In addition, regarding the various compulsory epidemic control measures taken by the health administrative authorities, such as the problems of forceful unlocking of doors for intrusion of residences, forceful (emergency) spraying of insecticide, and the compensation for the loss of property rights after the death of real estate owners¡¦ animals or plants caused by the chemical spraying, etc., the study reviews the reference of laws and the proper legal procedures to be complied with. It includes the theories and principles of the Constitution that Taiwan government should comply with. Although the paper encounters limitations in the studying process, it is still hoped that from the limited literatures with limited information, major directions can be found out as a reference for the competent authorities or scholars to improve or solve the abovementioned problems in the later days. It is also expected that the later researchers can have further understanding of the implementation or practical aspects of the epidemic prevention measures of dengue fever, and finally achieve in-depth development and breakthrough in the studies of the solutions. Keywords: dengue fever, basic human rights, epidemic prevention measures

Human rights have become a dominant framework through which to narrate and read political violence in contemporary literature concerning Africa, the Caribbean, and the Indian subcontinent. This dissertation argues that human rights discourse depoliticizes crises that result from histories of colonialism, inequitable development policies, and the growth of transnational capital. The testimonial narrative structure of human rights treats political violence as trauma and portrays the narrator as testifier and reader as witness. It assumes that in the exchange between these figures a cathartic process takes place and that by proxy the original political violence may be resolved. The language of human rights is thus deployed to illuminate the suffering of others without interrupting processes of global capitalism or narratives of US exceptionalism. This dissertation examines the intersection of human rights discourse and postcoloniality. It analyzes the decolonial strategies through which postcolonial texts challenge human rights discourse and shift focus from trauma and catharsis to the national and international policies, business practices, and cultural narratives that sustain inequitable power structures. This dissertation begins by critiquing the concept of literary humanitarianism, which suggests that the reader may fulfill a humanitarian act by reading a story of suffering. After showing in the introduction how this literary trend is connected to changes in the nation-state system, the first two chapters analyze the narrative mechanics of the testimonial narrative structure. As these opening essays examine depictions of apartheid in South Africa, genocide in Rwanda, and slow violence in India, they problematize the expansion of the 'universal' humanist narrative voice and critique the construction of a humanitarian reader. Chapter three then compares methodological approaches to storytelling to analyze the relationship between literature, the archive, and lived reality in post-apartheid South Africa. Moving into a discussion of the economic and cultural imperialism that characterize the postcolonial condition, the final two chapters reveal how representations of old and new diasporas across Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the Americas resist the language of human rights. Together, these chapters argue that the political potential of literature is not in staging humanitarian resolutions but in interrogating the frameworks that sustain inequality.

This dissertation argues that the idea of constitutional rights transformed Canadian constitutional law well before the entrenchment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Specifically, it locates the origins of Canada’s twentieth-century rights revolution in the constitutional thinking of scholars, lawyers, judges, and politicians at mid-century (1930-1960). Drawing on archival documents, personal papers, government reports, parliamentary debates, case law, and legal scholarship, this work traces the constitutional thought and culture that first propelled human rights and fundamental freedoms to the forefront of the Canadian legal imagination. As a work of legal history, it also seeks to revive the dormant spirit of constitutional history that once pervaded the discipline of Canadian constitutional law. The Introduction situates the chapters that follow within the emerging Canadian historiography of rights. Chapter Two traces the origins of Frank Scott’s advocacy for constitutional rights to the newer constitutional law, an approach to constitutional scholarship sparked by the social and political upheavals of the Depression, and the influence of Roscoe Pound’s sociological jurisprudence. Chapter Three explores the varied dimensions of the Second World War’s influence on the nascent idea of Canadian constitutional rights. In particular, the rapid rise of the wartime administrative state produced a rights discourse that tended to reflect the interests of property while ignoring the civil liberties of unpopular minorities. Chapter Four examines the rise of a politics and scholarship of rights in the years immediately following the war. In response to international rights ideals and continuing domestic rights controversies, scholars and lawyers sought to produce a theory of Canadian constitutional law that could accommodate the addition of judicially-enforced individual rights. If not entirely successful, their efforts nonetheless further reoriented the fundamental tenets of Canadian constitutional law. Chapter Five reveals the influence of Canada’s emerging constitutional culture of rights on the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Canada, particularly Justice Ivan Rand and his conception of an implied bill of rights. Together, these chapters demonstrate the confluence of ideology, circumstance, and personality – the constitutional history – that altered the future of Canadian constitutional law.