Ordinary People, Extraordinary Actions

What motivates “ordinary people” to support refugees emotionally and financially? This is a timely question considering the number of displaced people in today’s world is at an all-time high. To help counter this crisis, it is imperative for the Canadian government to determine which policies encourage volunteers to welcome asylum seekers, and which ones must be reviewed. Ordinary People, Extraordinary Actions relates the story of the St. Joseph’s Parish Refugee Outreach Committee over its thirty years in action, revealing how seemingly small decisions and actions have led to significant changes in policies and in people’s lives—and how they can do so again in the future. By helping readers—young and old, secular and faith-oriented—understand what drives individuals and communities to welcome refugees with open hearts and open arms, the authors hope to inspire people across Canada and beyond its borders to strengthen our collective willingness and ability to offer refuge as a lifesaving protection for those who need it

African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights

African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights examines the emerging trend of requests for expert opinions in asylum hearings or refugee status determinations. This is the first book to explore the role of court-based expertise in relation to African asylum cases and the first to establish a rigorous analytical framework for interpreting the effects of this new reliance on expert testimony. Over the past two decades, courts in Western countries and beyond have begun demanding expert reports tailored to the experience of the individual claimant. As courts increasingly draw upon such testimony in their deliberations, expertise in matters of asylum and refugee status is emerging as an academic area with its own standards, protocols, and guidelines. This deeply thoughtful book explores these developments and their effects on both asylum seekers and the experts whose influence may determine their fate. Contributors: Iris Berger, Carol Bohmer, John Campbell, Katherine Luongo, E. Ann McDougall, Karen Musalo, Tricia Redeker Hepner, Amy Shuman, Joanna T. Tague, Meredith Terretta, and Charlotte Walker-Said.https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/oupress/1023/thumbnail.jp

Petitioning for our Rights, Fighting for our Nation : The History of the Democratic Union of Cameroonian Women, 1949-1960

Thousands of Cameroonian women played an essential role in the radically anti-colonial nationalist movement led by the Union of the Populations of Cameroon (UPC): they were the women of the Democratic Union of Cameroonian Women (UDEFEC). Drawing on women nationalists' petitions to the United Nations, one of the largest collections of political documents written by African women during the decolonization era, as well as archival research and oral interviews, this work shows how UDEFEC transcended ethnic, class, education and social divides, and popularized nationalism in both urban and rural areas through the Trust Territories of the Cameroons under French and British administration. Foregrounding issues such as economic autonomy and biological and agricultural fertility, UDEFEC politics wove anti-imperial democracy and notions of universal human rights into locally rooted political cultures and histories. UDEFEC's history sheds light on the essential components of women's successful political mobilization in Africa, and contributes to the discussion of women's involvement in nationalist movements in formerly colonized territories

Une campagne d’opinion contre l’Apartheid : l’affaire de la greffe du cœur (1968)

International audienceThis article analyses the professional and political activity of de Félice in regard to the anti-Apartheid cause he was defending, an issue at both the heart and on the edge of his professional activities as a lawyer. At the heart, because the analysis of his role as secretary and then as president of the French Comittee against the Apartheid from 1963 to 1975 shows the tangle of the committed defence lawyer’s issues with those he had as a private citizen. On the edge, because it dealt with a geographical environment he hardly knew, and furthermore was taking place quite far from the field of French public awareness.Cet article examine l’activité professionnelle et politique de de Félice au travers de la cause anti-Apartheid qu’il défendait, cause qui se situe à la fois au centre et aux marges de son activité professionnelle d’avocat. Au centre car l’analyse de son rôle de Secrétaire et ensuite Président du Comité français contre l’Apartheid de 1963 à 1975 nous permet de comprendre l’enchevêtrement des causes de l’avocat-défenseur dans celles de l’homme public. Aux marges car il s’agit d’un milieu géographique qu’il connaissait peu et qui en outre se situait fort loin de la conscience publique française

Activism in the Shadows of Universalism: Where Is Human Rights, Then and Now?

Meredith Terretta shows how historical inquiry contributes to an understanding of contemporary human rights as contingent. Using 20th century Africa as a case study, Terretta focuses on transregional activism to demonstrate that rights claims from colonial settings preceded a discursive structure of universal human rights emerging in 1948.\ud \ud \ud \ud Meredith Terretta montre comment l’analyse historique contribue à éclairer le caractère conjoncturel des droits humains contemporains. Étudiant l’Afrique du 20e siècle, Terretta se focalise sur l’activisme transrégional en vue de démontrer que, bien avant l’émergence en 1948 d’un cadre discursif sur l'universalité des droits humains, le cadre colonial était déjà le théâtre de revendications de droits