The Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development
The Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development is an interdisciplinary academic peer-review research journal. It is Open Access and distributed internationally in both electronic and hard copy form. It represents a growing community of scholars and development practitioners who contribute critically to policy debates on global sustainable development.
On the Sustainability of Industrial Heritage Creative Clusters
With the introduction of the UN’s 2030 Agenda (Sustainable Development Goals) and a new emphasis on both culture and the ecological environment in China’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025, inclusive), we now face a significant test case for global development. The future trajectory of industrial heritage creative clusters in China has drawn increasing attention, in part as it is becoming increasingly clear how global development (all over the world) has been propelled by urbanisation. As a selective presentation on what remains from a glorious industrial past, whether London or Shanghai, industrial heritage clusters face their own question on the future — how can they achieve sustainable development and become an active factor in a city’s historical evolution? This article takes the M50 Creative Cluster in Shanghai to survey what remains of its 20-year development trajectory in the context of the city’s evolving urban development. This article explores the potential driving forces for an ongoing sustainability, as well as the constraints clusters faces; it aims to provide insights for a policy agenda that integrates cultural policy and urban sustainability. The article first reviews the global and Chinese trajectories of industrial heritage creative clusters and then surveys relevant literature on creative clusters and their sustainable development. Using Lily Kong’s framework for understanding the sustainability of creative clusters, the article offers a detailed assessment of M50’s development path, summarising its dynamic patterns and offering reflections that may inform the sustainable development of similar creative clusters.
Copyright (c) 2025 The Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development
Discrimination is often viewed as an individual attitude or a social issue, effectively addressed through the application of rights-based codes of conduct or a legal framework of rights implementation. Its ‘cultural’ dimension has often remained insignificant, secondary or just underexplored. This article proposes that discrimination should also be understood as a cultural phenomenon, a response to which should involve cultural policy. Such policy, it is argued, could enhance certain rights that, in turn, could become axiomatic for a fuller legal comprehension of discrimination. Iteratively, this could then form the basis for further policy-based responses. A secondary register of this article takes the form of a proposal that rights-based cultural policies, to be effective, require an attention to cultural capital. By interconnecting the (contested) concepts of cultural rights, discrimination, and cultural capital, we will propose how cultural rights-based policy can serve as a more strategic response to discrimination, advancing the current impasse in our policy understanding of the phenomenon. Drawing on the legal foundations of cultural rights as a dimension of human rights law, this study both challenges Pierre Bourdieu’s conventional view of cultural capital and use it in a way that provides opportunity for the integration and coordination of human rights, anti-discrimination and cultural policies, strategically enhancing all these areas. The article’s conceptual approach will hopefully also provoke a new theoretical and practical impetus to research rights-based cultural policy itself, which might facilitate a comprehensive response to discrimination beyond the current legal measures that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.
Culture as a Sustainable Development Goal?
This article advocates for establishing ‘culture’ as the 18th Sustainable Development Goal (for the UN’s SDGs) to strengthen long-term cultural diplomacy strategies. The author argues that while the current 17 SDGs address diverse global challenges, they lack explicit recognition of culture's fundamental role in fostering international cooperation and understanding diversity. Drawing on the UNESCO 2005 Convention and Achille Mbembe's concept of "dissimilitude", the author proposes that artistic and aesthetic spaces can create opportunities for experiencing global citizenship through difference rather than assimilation. The article critiques the heterogeneity of existing SDGs, noting how some goals reflect dominant economic systems that may perpetuate neoliberal and neo-colonial approaches. It contends that cultural and artistic practices uniquely enable individuals to connect their personal experiences with global contexts, fostering sustainable living through diverse perspectives. By establishing culture as an SDG, international cultural policy actors could create spaces where citizens could experience cultural diversity, transfer personal perspectives globally, and develop the cultural competencies necessary for addressing complex global challenges through inclusive, multi-perspectival approaches to sustainability.
Civil society actors and practices for reshaping international cultural relations
This article examines the expanding role of civil society organisations (CSOs) and the ‘fourth sector’ in reshaping international cultural relations over the past fifteen years. The authors analyse bottom-up approaches that challenge traditional state-led cultural diplomacy, focusing on how CSOs operate beyond ‘methodological nationalism’ while resisting both globalisation pressures and exclusive national identity promotion. Drawing on examples from the Balkans and other regions—including Nomad Dance Academy, Krokodil literary festival, and Red/Crvena feminist organisation—the study demonstrates how civil society employs innovative strategies such as festivals, art residencies, knowledge transfer, and regional networking. These organisations prioritise the ethics of solidarity and care, often working to decolonise and de-Europeanise cultural relations. The research reveals that CSOs function as ‘counterpublic’ spaces, creating platforms for dissent and social change while fostering equitable cultural exchanges. Unlike traditional diplomatic approaches, civil society initiatives emphasise fairness, mutual enrichment of peripheries, and bringing marginalised voices to global attention, offering alternative frameworks for international cultural cooperation based on responsibility and solidarity.
This study examines South Korea's transformation into a cultural powerhouse through Hallyu (the Korean Wave), arguing that its success stems from synergetic collaboration between public and private sectors rather than state-led developmental alone. The article analyses how, from the 1990s onward, government policy engineered a ‘whole-of-government’ approach, across multiple administrations, establishing comprehensive frameworks for cultural diplomacy and nation branding. The article identifies four key private sector drivers: competent cultural actors (K-pop idols, producers), commercially-driven business actors, overseas consumers transitioning from passive recipients to active producers, and digital platforms facilitating transmedia storytelling. The author argues that Hallyu transcended the entertainment industry and embodied a means of transnationalism and a form of cultural hybridisation that challenged Western-centric paradigms, enabling contraflows from periphery to centre. The study concludes that collaborative cultural governance enabled South Korea's transition from economic to cultural powerhouse through a value-driven global influence of unique origins
This article examines the ARTS RIGHTS JUSTICE (ARJ) Programme, developed at the University of Hildesheim in Germany, to address the growing global suppression of artistic freedom and expression. Launched in 2017, the programme includes summer academies that train experts in supporting artists at risk and includes an online library providing resources on artistic freedom. The author contextualises this initiative within UNESCO's 2005 Convention on Cultural Diversity, along with debates over decolonising international cooperation. The programme identifies critical thematic areas requiring attention: censorship mechanisms, advocacy, networking, monitoring, fair collaboration, mobility justice, and hosting at-risk artists. Collaboration emerges as essential for sector-strengthening, exemplified by partnerships with organisations like ICORN and UNESCO. The article emphasises the need for globally distributed, locally-rooted actors, to ensure that universal human rights principles are integrated within diverse cultural narratives, contexts, organisations and institutions.
This article argues that media literacy constitutes a foundational skill for cultural diplomacy practitioners, navigating today’s diplomatic landscape that is a complex of global communications. The author examines how twenty-first-century media environments present both opportunities for cross-cultural engagement and challenges of disinformation, echo chambers, and artificial intelligence (AI) manipulation. The article defines media literacy as the ability to access, analyse, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication, emphasising its role in developing critical thinking skills and empathy essential for intercultural competence. The author presents the Center for Media Literacy's framework of ‘Five Key Questions and Core Concepts’, demonstrating how this evidence-based approach can enhance cultural diplomacy effectiveness — helping practitioners understand message construction, audience reception, embedded values, and communication purposes. The study showcases practical applications through UNESCO's Media and Information Literacy Alliance and Fulbright's NATO Security Studies Award, illustrating how international organisations integrate media literacy into cultural exchange programs. The author concludes that media literacy skills transcend borders and cultures, supporting global communication, connection, and innovation in an increasingly interconnected world.
Surprisingly absent today in the arsenal of democracy and legal development interventions globally, and of little interest in the ‘Western democracies’, is civic education in public schools. Preparing citizens with the wide range of skills for equal participation and impact in the full spectrum of public decision-making in all institutions that have political influence — regardless of citizens’ individual positions, families, access, wealth or other differential ability to exert power — is largely ignored. This article begins with the theory of civics education for democracy and examines the approaches that currently exist domestically in the U.S. and globally, including in international development (governance and ‘democracy building’) programs, for defining the essential skills for civic education for social contract democracy and preparing citizens for full and equal exercise of public responsibilities to assure the overall protection of group and individual rights and for meeting specific needs. Based on this theory, the article generates a list of key civic skill categories and skills for social contract democracy in complex societies. It then uses this list to create an indicator for measuring the actual commitment of countries and the ability of specific curricula to prepare citizens fully and equally and effectively for social contract democracy and for guiding efforts to improve civic education. Global application of this indicator reveals little real difference today in the preparation of citizens in ‘Western democracies’ and in one-Party or (generally recognised) authoritarian states, with regard civic responsibilities
Factors Driving the Choice of Education in Pashtun-dominated Areas of Baluchistan: a research essay
This study is a synthesis of existing research knowledge and of empirical research in the geographic areas of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in which ethnic Pashtuns are a majority. The subject is the how fundamental principles, beliefs and cultural commitments motivate and shape decision-making in education for parents of pre-tertiary young people. Parental choice may seem limited and obvious, but it is subject to a matrix of factors. Access to the rural areas of Pakistan requires navigation, as does understanding the cultural depth of ethnic Pashtuns. Researched and written by a resident official, this study aims to uncover the layers of meaning and significance within the seemingly elemental choice faced by most if not all parents – how their child learns, and what and where they learn. The implications of this decision, this study maintains, will be a shaping factor for a culture and society in transition. And it remains so for current ethnic Pashtuns in relation to the madrassas, private and public schools.
Copyright (c) 2024 The Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development
Comunalidad, Development and Indigenous Rights in Oaxaca, Mexico
In the 1980s, in the Southern State of Oaxaca in Mexico, a group of civil society organisations, anthropologists and indigenous intellectuals posed a challenge to state-led development. They engaged with the long history of colonialism and injustices faced by indigenous Mexicans, analysed the changing nature of the relationship between local indigenous and rural communities and the state, and proposed a renovation of communal practice and the development of autonomous government based on consensual decision making as a basis for an alternative anti-poverty strategy. They called this Comunalidad, and supporters of Comunalidad engaged with the emerging indigenous rights legislation. Comunalidad can be understood in the context of the Latin American anti-development, anti-capitalist tradition. The movements and projects established as part of the movement have been effective in developing community identity and defending the cultural autonomy of communities in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca. Understanding Oaxacan Comunalidad is important for getting at the 'narrative behind the numbers' of contemporary development policy. Comunalidad anti-poverty strategies revolved around community development rather than economic development and serve as a useful example of a local approach to development.
An Islamic Game Theory approach for overcoming base erosion profit shifting challenges for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)
BEPS (Base erosion and profit shifting) challenges have been present between the countries of the OIC for a considerable period of time, leading to significant tax losses to its societies. This has further led to challenges, as tax dues, demanded by Islamic law, are not collected. In this situation, corporations and individuals aim to exploit tax benefits in order to minimise their overall taxation. We here present a new framework integrating Game theory and Islamic values for addressing the challenges with BEPS for the OIC. The framework outlines seven key strategies in order to address BEPS issues, resolving the potential tax abuses by corporations while maintaining closer alignment with Islamic values. Furthermore, our framework provides a deep learning cooperative game theory model for the optimisation of the tax rates in the multilateral taxation agreement in order to create the most overall benefit for all participants of the OIC.
This paper evaluates how customary justice systems align with juvenile justice standards as set out in the Beijing Rules. It considers a dataset of 3,894 interviews conducted by the Terre des hommes foundation with 259 customary actors in Afghanistan, Egypt, Lebanon, Burkina Faso, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It is argued that reforming customary systems to better resemble access to justice mechanisms — at least from a child welfare perspective — may be wrongheaded. Instead, customary justice systems might be conceptualised as a potential juvenile justice tool. From an efficiency and scalability perspective, such an approach has intuitive appeal. As well as handling a majority of dispute resolution, these systems naturally divert children away from formal legal processes, shield them from detention, facilitate rehabilitation and promote reintegration. The question should hence be how current policies and programming might be reconceptualized to capitalize on customary justice systems as a response to the deficits in juvenile justice in the developing world.
Caste, 'quotas' and discrimination in India
Ashwini Deshpande is Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India. Her Ph.D. and early publications have been on the international debt crisis of the 1980s. Subsequently, she has been working on the economics of discrimination and affirmative action issues, with a focus on caste and gender in India. She has published extensively in leading scholarly journals. She is the author of "Grammar of Caste: economic discrimination in contemporary India", OUP, hardcover 2011 and paperback 2017, forthcoming; and "Affirmative Action in India", OUP, Oxford India Short Introductions series, 2013. She received the EXIM Bank award for outstanding dissertation (now called the IERA Award) in 1994, and the 2007 VKRV Rao Award for Indian economists under 45. In this interview she talks about her work on caste-based ‘quotas’ or ‘reservation’ (terms for affirmative action in India) and their impact. Her work helps demolish several of the myths around quotas and assumes tremendous significance in a polity where reservation policy faces severe opposition from the elite even as it drives electoral politics in many regions of the country. In view of recent developments on university campuses in India, such quantitative work at the interface of sociology, economics and social psychology, becomes important evidence supporting affirmative action and exposing myths of “merit”-based selection processes and “market rationality”. Further details of Ashwini Deshpande’s current and previous work can be found on her department webpage: http://econdse.org/ashwini/.
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The impact of structural reform strategies of international financial institutons on the rule of law, good governance and development in Pakistan
This article aims to critique the impact of Structural Reform Strategies of International Financial Institutions (IFIs) upon the rule of law, good governance and development in Pakistan. The key contention of this article is that the absence of social justice in Pakistan is a consequence of the interaction IFIs policies and weak structures of governance, the rule of law and development introduced by the government of Pakistan. Whilst IFI policies have recently attempted to emphasise human rights, good governance, the rule of law and development, they have been ineffective in part due to submissiveness of IFI’s to the geo-strategic interests of the U.S. and Western powers and internal factors within Pakistan. This article is organised into three parts. Part I examines the impact of Structural Reform Strategies (SRSs) of the IFIs upon the rule of law and good governance in Pakistan. Part II highlights the impacts of SRSs of the IFIs on development in Pakistan whilst focussing upon three key issues such as, poverty, education and health. Part III concludes the article and summarises key arguments.
Domestic violence is a serious issue in India with 37% of women reporting being beaten at some point in their lives in national surveys. While this is likely to be an undercount given the stigma associated with intimate partner violence and women’s lack of access to the justice system, it is noteworthy that conviction rates continue to be extremely low even for the those cases that end up in the Courts. Drawing from critical legal anthropology and feminist jurisprudence, I argue that legal language, procedures and discourses attempt to normalise domestic violence by deploying discursive strategies such as consistent and pervasive use of the passive voice diminishing perpetrator responsibility, trivializing violence by avoiding the use of violent attributions in describing violent acts, and shifting blame to victims. Of the 787 cases registered under Section 498(A), disposed by the Bombay High Court between 1998 and 2004, just 6% obtained a conviction where the victim was alive, and 35% to 39% were convicted where victims had committed suicide or had been murdered. Conviction rates were extremely variable with many judges acquitting all the cases that they tried and just two judges convicting a third or more of the cases brought for trial. This disparity was further consolidated by procedural inconsistencies including the treatment of evidence, extent of documentation required to prove a history of abuse, the classification of interested witnesses and retractions by medical examiners, who were seldom cross-examined. The findings present a very troubling picture for gender justice in India, suggesting that what we need are not additional laws but a gender-aware approach to the implementations of existing laws.
Second language learning involves affective factors such as interactions with the dominant linguistic and cultural group, and related problems of self-concept, identity, and self-esteem. Substantial attention has not been paid to these categories in the field of earlier studies of second language acquisition. In recent years however, there has been increasing research on the relationship between second language learning and the question of identity. The lives of immigrant women, particularly of ethnic minority, may be complicated not only by gendered and systematic inequalities but also cultural conflicts which makes them struggle to define and redefine their identity. It is important to raise awareness of perceptions of immigrant women learning and speaking the language of the host community as their experiences intersect with race, gender and class, and contribute to their identity formations. Drawing on the poststructuralist notion of identity as “multiple, changing, and a site of struggle” (Norton and Toohey 2011, p. 412 Butler 1990; Weedon 1997, p.21) and Norton’s (1997) work on identity and investment, this paper examines the relationship between the process of learning English as a second language and social class, and analyses the construction gender identity of Gujarati women upon migration to the UK. It further underlines how the inability to speak English for migrant women is further complicated by inequities brought about by classed structures, private/public patriarchy and processes of ‘othering’. External life experiences and personal relationships are integrally linked to linguistic confidence and identity formation/subjectivities. This study aims to understand from a sociolinguistic perspective the dynamics of Gujarati women’s identities across different migrations and patterns of settlements in the UK.
The Directive 2010/64/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 October 2010 establishes common minimum rules for European Union (EU) countries on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings as well as in proceedings for the execution of the European arrest warrant. This provision as well as the right to sign language as a human right reiterated by the EUD in the Brussels Declaration ensure that deaf sign language users can access the justice system, typically through sign language interpreters. There is a growing body of literature that examines sign language interpreting provision and practices in legal contexts in various countries. The common theme in the results of all these studies is the limitations faced by deaf sign language users in gaining access to justice, either through inadequate interpreting provision, poor quality interpreting services, or lack of training, accreditation and standards for legal SLIs. This paper reports on a survey that was developed as part of the Justisigns project to provide an overview of the current status of sign language interpreting in legal settings across Europe to better understand what the training needs of interpreters, and other stakeholders such as police officers and deaf people themselves might be. Drawing on key themes from the European Commission survey on legal interpreting in the EU (Hertog & Van Gucht, 2008) and the survey of ASL legal interpreters in the United States (Roberson, Russell & Shaw, 2011), a questionnaire instrument was developed and delivered through an online survey tool. The findings reveal that there are inconsistencies in how legal sign language interpreting provision occurs across Europe.
Reconceptualising socio-economic rights in the transitional justice discipline
This article questions whether sufficient attention is given to addressing violations of socio-economic rights in the transitional justice context. Economic and Social rights (ESR) are rights associated with areas such as health, education, employment and housing. They are binding international legal standards and their protection extends to some of the most vulnerable groups in society. Transitional justice is the discipline examining the mechanisms through which the wrongs of a prior regime can be addressed when a state moves from illiberal regime to liberal democracy. The discourse has focussed increasing attention on socio-economic dimensions of transitional justice without fully grasping the nature or status of socio-economic rights law. This article uses a legal perspective in order to ask whether theories of prioritisation, judicial incrementalism and deliberative democracy will assist in ensuring pre-transition structural inequalities are addressed as part of the transitional justice paradigm and in accordance with international law requirements. It is argued that the emerging approach of addressing socio-economic rights violations through means of reparation may fail to address the structural inequalities associated with the prior regime. This article proposes that new and alternative structures must be imagined if the transitional justice discipline is to adequately address socio-economic violations in an emerging democracy with a view to establishing long term peace.
The European Union’s Response to Smuggling of Syrian Asylum Seekers
Although the European Union’s recent focus has been on human trafficking and its human rights implications, insufficient attention has been devoted to the phenomenon of refugee smuggling, which has been exacerbated by the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011. This study investigates the implications of the post-2010 EU anti-smuggling norms and strategies on refugee rights. It focuses on the specific case of Syrians, as they constitute the largest refugee group fleeing into Europe. Along with the available literature, data for this study was collected through a survey of 16 Syrian refugees currently residing in the EU. Firstly, the article presents the modus operandi pertinent to refugee smuggling networks to give an overview of the dimension of the phenomenon. Secondly, by observing the experience of Syrian refugees as they are smuggled across borders, the study highlights practices of pushbacks, inefficient border identifications, prolonged arrests, and the lack of legal means to access the EU territory. To conclude, the study advocates for initiatives to prevent Syrians from colliding with the explored harsh reality and halt smugglers from making a profit out of asylum seekers’ dire conditions.
Ideological formation, national development, and the "mass line"
The subject of this article is the nexus of strategic political frameworks of the People's Republic of China that have informed the evolution of national cultural policy. The article underscores how cultural policy always was, and has remained, a central official mechanism for both national economic development and not (as is assumed) the dissemination and inculcation of political ideology. This article therefore attempts to address what it perceives to be the limited depth of Western contemporary cultural policy research on China — and its research agenda otherwise hostile to China’s communist government. The article’s principle purpose is therefore to identify the conditions by which cultural policy emerged as a significant field of political thought, strategically used by central government for articulating its mission, values and aims within its broader political economy. The article argues that today, even without the possibility of China’s immanent conversion to Western liberal-style democracy, the enterprise of cultural policy can play a significant role in the country’s development. This possibility is not dependent upon Westernisation or Western influence in any form, but on what is one of the most established of communist doctrines, the doctrine of the “mass line”.
Copyright (c) 2023 The Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development
The Status of the Artist, Cultural Rights and the 2005 Convention
This article is written in the spirit of a festschrift, in honour of recently retired Professor Milena Dragićević Šešić. Once Rector of the University of Arts, Belgrade, and the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy and Management, Professor Milena’s work and personal charisma have made a European-wide impact on both students and scholars, artists and activists. Her example is one of a university academic who is socially-engaged, politically astute, and who possseses the communication skills that have enabled her to participate in cultural politics at the highest level. Her contribution towards cultural thought and freedom of expression in her own country of Serbia (Yugoslavia until the early 1990s) will offer an important intellectual legacy. The aim of this article is to contribute to the emergence of this legacy by discussing our current policy understanding of artistic freedom in a way that amplifies its intellectual complexity as well as its policy necessity. I argue that cultural policy has struggled to defend, artistic freedom, despite many relevant intellectual resources provided by UNESCO; however, there remains hope in the form of a critical attention to the terms of the 2005 Convention and the historical discourse of culture and development from which it emerged.
Restarting Law and Development as a Model Sub-Discipline
The field of “Law and Development” finds itself with competing disciplinary and institutional agendas, overlapping and unclear definitions, borders, and scope, with no real rules of academic integrity or legitimacy to follow or to which it is held accountable. This article builds and applies an indicator with model standards for the structuring of academic disciplines to evaluate the legitimacy and integrity of this sub-discipline as an example for others. It then offers a model agenda for the basic social science questions to research and the technological applications that would help the sub-discipline to develop in a way that more appropriately fits a scholarly sub-discipline with applications of public benefit. The model approach offered in this article can be applied to emerging fields and sub-fields to identify those that are being shaped by politics rather than scholarly criteria; distinguishing them from legitimate fields and helping to strengthen their structures.
The Imperative for Justiciability of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in Post-Civil War Sri Lanka
Between 2015 and 2019 Sri Lanka has been in the process of drafting a new Constitution in the aftermath of the civil war that lasted from 1983 to 2009. In spite of the very high human development in Sri Lanka, public expenditures on education and health as a proportion of the GDP have declined since the 1960s. Besides, it is argued that democracy in Sri Lanka is patronage cum greed based, and hence a case is made for inculcating a merit cum need based democracy for which justiciability of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ESCR) is a sine qua non. Moreover, we argue a case for incorporating ESCR as justiciable rights in the proposed new Constitution not only on its own right but also as a means of durable peacebuilding in the aftermath of a savage civil war.
Embracing the Data Revolution for Development
This article examines the challenges that the digitalisation of agriculture in Africa brings with respect to ownership and control of data from the perspective of African indigenous farmers as data originators. It discusses the phenomena of the data revolution and digital agriculture in Africa, mapping out the ecosystem of digital agriculture by identifying general trends, key players, types and features of digitalisation driven by the capabilities of mobile and network infrastructure as well as by higher-level digitisation supported by data infrastructures capability. By situating farm data as a constitutive element of traditional knowledge of agricultural production that is subjected to ‘datafication’, the article outlines the challenges of access to data and of unequal utilisation of data as having an impact on development imperatives that necessitate better control of data flows. It proposes data justice as a conceptual framework for an Africa-wide governance of farm data in which the challenges on access to data and unfairness in its utilisation are addressed in a manner consistent with the continent’s aspirations for intra-regional relations.
The Sociology and Culture of Sustainable Development
This is an interview with Professor John Clammer of Jindal Global University, Dehli, India. He is a British academic who has worked principally in Asia, and is now one of the leading writers and scholars on the vital issues pertaining to global sustainable development. This interview was begun while Professor Clammer was a visiting fellow at the Warwick Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) in 2018, and then continued with various iterations of our academic partnership since then. This interview cites his latest books, notably the publication Cultural Rights and Justice (2019), and also offers an historic overview of his experience of academic life within the evolving discourse of social and cultural development.
Unpacking the histories, contours and multiplicity of India’s women’s movement(s)
Uma Chakravarti is a distinguished feminist activist, historian, teacher and film-maker. She taught at Miranda House, University of Delhi and has been a leading light of India’s women’s movement(s) for more than forty years. She has written extensively about women’s issues ranging from the women characters in mythology, the treatment of upper caste Hindu widows and caste-based violence to state repression and ‘sexual governance’. Having witnessed the violence of the Indian partition at a young age, she has always been deeply committed to democracy and involved in upholding the right to dissent. She has been a member of multiple fact-finding teams that have investigated communal riots and human rights violations in India; for example, the International Tribunal on Justice for Gujarat. Her books include Rewriting history: the life and times of Pandita Ramabai, Everyday lives, everyday histories: beyond the kings and Brahmanas of 'ancient' India, The Delhi riots: three days in the life of a nation and Speaking peace: women's voices from Kashmir. Her documentaries include Fragments of a past, A quiet little entry and Ek inquilab aur aaya.
States rich in natural resources often have poor human rights records. Political scientists have labelled this correlation the “resource curse”. To address structural causes and the misappropriation of resources by the rulers of those countries, Leif Wenar proposes in his book, Blood Oil, the so-called Clean Trade Act. We draw on Wenar’s work to theorise how activists interested in bringing about these changes might utilize the existing features of international law to adopt Wenar’s proposals. Activists interested in taking up Wenar’s challenge to reform the ownership and distribution of global commodities would move beyond Wenar’s narrow public law framework, and study the myriad forms of regulation and interactions that define the contemporary transformation of political sovereignty and rule-making under the conditions of globalisation. It is not enough that Clean Trade Laws are passed in developed nations.
The Law-Sustainable Development Nexus in the Agenda 2030 and European Consensus for Development
Both the Agenda 2030 and the EU’s policy documents, directed to the implementation thereof, point to the ‘inter-linkages between the Goals’, ‘integrated nature of the Goals’, ‘cross-cutting action areas’ and Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development. In view of this, and the prominence of the law-development nexus problematique in development economics theory, this paper aims to explore the substance of the law-sustainable development nexus in the Agenda 2030 and the new European Consensus for Development. In theoretical terms, the study is based on the insights from the key development economics theories (‘integration through law’, modernisation theory, international dependence and world systems theories, neoclassicism and governance). Methodologically, the research combines ‘black letter law’ approach and document analysis.
Child marriage persists in Tanzania despite Tanzania being party to and ratifying international and regional human rights instruments, which call for the abolition of harmful traditional practices such as child marriage. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), urgent action is needed to take solutions to scale and prevent the thousands of girl children in Tanzania today from being married in the next decade(s). This paper aims to critically analyse the law and measures taken by the government to deal with child marriage in Tanzania in light of the obligations accrued from international human rights instruments that Tanzania is a party to. Secondary data has been utilised to analyse Tanzania’s response to its international human rights obligations on child marriage, and to make appropriate recommendations for reform.
This is a professional comment, and represents the views of the author.