Dr Chaloka Beyani, NAB 7.04

For LLM and MSc Human Rights students.

This course is capped at 30 students. Students must apply through Graduate Course Choice on LSEforYou.

The course looks at how human rights are experienced in the developing global South. It reflects on the question of what socio-cultural significance human rights standards can and do have in the multi-facetted 'developing world', and then examines the role and impact of (domestic) law for their realization. Different types of rights and case studies of their legal enforcement in diverse 'developing country' jurisdictions will serve as illustrations of the multiple 'functionings' of human rights in this realm.

1. What are human rights? What is the 'developing world'? Why 'human rights in the developing world'?
2. The question of the socio-cultural significance of human rights in the 'developing world' - cultural relativism v. universalism of human rights.
3. Global, international, and domestic human rights discourse
4. The form and the substance of human rights: international law, constitutional bills of rights and human rights acts and their core contents and aspirations as well as specificities of the 'developing world'.
5. Human rights and (domestic) courts: from legalization to judicialization. Civil and political rights in transnational judicial conversations.
6. The (domestic) judicialization of social and economic rights: questions of justiciability, enforcement and impact. 'Human rights and'...development, poverty, and global economic regimes as reflected in the domestic context.
7. 'Human rights and'...(human) security.
8. 'Human rights and'...the conundrums of the developing nation-state - the rights of minorities, disadvantaged groups and the economically excluded.
9. 'Human rights and'...health and environmental protection.
10. Horizontalizing human rights law: getting (domestically) at 'non-state actors'.
11. Outlook: wither human rights in the 'developing world'.

23 two-hour seminars, including guest lecturers.

Students are asked to participate in regular group Q&A exercises which are posted on the course's Moodle site.

Alston, Promoting Human Rights Through Bill of Rights; Alston & Robinson, Human Rights and Development; Anderson & Happold, Constitutional Human Rights in the Commonwealth; An-Naim, Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives; An-Naim, Human Rights, Local Remedies; An-Naim, Human Rights Under African Constitutions; Bauer & Bell, The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights; Cowan & Dembour & Wilson, Culture and Rights: anthropological perspectives; Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice; Dunne & Wheeler, Human Rights in Global Politics; Ghai & Cottrell, Economic, Social & Cultural Rights in Practice; Jayawickrama, The Judicial Application of Human Rights Law; Mutua, Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique; Shivji, The Concept of Human Rights in Africa; Steiner & Alston, International Human Rights Law in Context; Wilson, Human Rights, Culture & Context, Wilson & Mitchell, Human Rights in Global Perspective.

A full reading list will be available through the course's Moodle page.

The course is examined by one extended essay of 8000 words, counting for 50% of the final grade, and one two-hour exam (with 15 minutes reading time) also counting for 50%. The extended essay will meet the LLM Writing Requirement.