Protecting Human Rights in Africa: Roles and Strategies of Nongovernmental Organizations (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights)

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Book for 1996

Since the 1950s, sub-Saharan Africa has been the site of profound political changes initiated by ascendant nationalism and rapid decolonization. With this new beginning came fresh challenges involving many crucial aspects of human rights: self-determination; civil and political rights, including government legitimacy; military involvement in African politics; and unfulfilled basic needs that have cried out for economic and social development.

Protecting Human Rights in Africa is the first major comparative study of the way human rights NGOs have brought revolutionary change south of the Sahara. Governments are both the most important protectors and abusers of human rights, while NGOs have become the most effective detectives in discovering abuses and the most active advocates in seeking solutions.

Claude E. Welch, Jr. is SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science and Director of the Human Rights Center and Program on International and Comparative Legal Studies, at the State University of New York at Buffalo.