Worlds of Human Rights

This book engages with contemporary African human rights struggles including land, property, gender equality and legal identity. Through ethnographic field studies it situates claims-making by groups and individuals that have been subject to injustices and abuses, often due to different forms of displacement, in specific geographical, historical and political contexts. Exploring local communities’ complexities and divided interests it addresses the ambiguities and tensions surrounding the processes whereby human rights have been incorporated into legislation, social and economic programs, legal advocacy, land reform, and humanitarian assistance. It shows how existing relations of inequality, domination and control are affected by the opportunities offered by emerging law and governance structures as a plurality of non-state actors enter what previously was considered the sole regulatory domain of the nation state.

Bill Derman, Ph.D. (1969), University of Michigan, is Professor of International and Environment Development Studies, Norwegian University of the Life Sciences. He has published many articles on contestations over land and water and human rights in southern Africa.

Anne Hellum, Dr.juris 1998, University of Oslo, Professor, Department of Public and International Law and Director of the Institute of Women's Law, Child Law, Discrimination and Equality Law. She has published widely on women's human rights and legal pluralism in Africa with the focus on reproduction, land and water.

Kristin Bergtora Sandvik,S.J.D Harvard Law School 2008, is a senior researcher at PRIO, and the head of the Norwegian Center for Humanitarian Studies. Her widely published work on Uganda and Colombia takes a socio-legal approach to the study of international law and the humanitarian enterprise.