Shifting institutional paradigms to advance socio-economic rights in Africa

Abstract

The thesis offers new paradigms for advancing socio-economic rights in Africa. Many States Parties to human rights instruments have failed to promote the common welfare of their citizens partly because of the justiciability debate, which continues to complicate intellectual and practical efforts at advancing socio-economic rights. The debate also prevents the normative development of these rights through adjudication. Furthermore, traditional human rights theory and practice have been state-centric, with non-state actors largely ignored in the identification, formulation, and implementation of human rights norms. Yet, the involvement of non-state entities in international arena has limited states' autonomies considerably, with serious implications for human rights. Transnational Corporations (TNCs) have capacities to foster economic well-being, development, tenchnological improvement, and wealth, but they also often cause deleterious human rights impacts through thei employment practices, environmental policies, relationships with suppliers and consumers, interactions with governments, and other activities.

The thesis argues that socio-economic rights are normative and justiciable. It argues that traditional approaches are no longer sufficient to secure human rights and calls for a dismantatling of some structures erected by doctrinal systems; for realignment of relationships among social institutions; and for integrated bundles of fundamental interests that harness benefits of human rights norms and widen the landscape to commit both formal and informal regimes. Fashioning out a new paradigm for advancement of socio-economic rights requires addressing state capacity. It requires an integrative and global interpretive framework. It requires, finally, a new paradigm to commit non-state actors in Africa. The illustrative chapter uses the rights to work and to social security as templates for some prescriptions towards reaslising socio-economic rights in Africa.