[Disability] justice dictated by the surfeit of love:Simone Weil in Nigeria

How is Nigeria’s failure to fulfil its obligations as a signatory of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to be appreciated or even resolved? Answers to this are sought through a seminal criticism of human rights, namely, Simone Weil’s 1942 essay Human Personality. Weil questioned the ability of human rights concepts to cause the powerful to develop the emotional dispositions of empathy for those who suffer. Weil’s insights provide a convincing explanation that the indifference of Nigerian authorities towards the Convention may be accounted for by the weakness of human rights discourse to foster human capacity for empathy and care for those who suffer. Weil’s criticisms will serve as a point of departure for a particular way to circumvent this inadequacy of human rights discourse to achieve disability justice in Nigeria through other means. I argue that Weil, through her concept of attention, grappled with and offers a consciousness of suffering and vulnerability that is not only uncommon to existing juridical human rights approaches, but is achievable through the active participation in the very forms of suffering and vulnerability in which amelioration is sought. To provide empirical content to this argument, I turn to a short-lived initiative of the Nigerian disability movement, which if ethico-politically refined and widely applied, can supply an action-theoretical grounding for and be combined with Weil’s work to elevate agitations for disability justice above human rights to the realm of human obligations

Vivendo plenamente a lei: a lei do amor e o amor pela lei

Divulgação dos SUMÁRIOS das obras recentemente incorporadas ao acervo da Biblioteca Ministro Oscar Saraiva do STJ. Em respeito à lei de Direitos Autorais, não disponibilizamos a obra na íntegra. STJ00074183 340.12 B218

Reframing public goods : human rights, community and governance in the Third World

The thesis takes as its starting point the importance of community in contemporary political societies across the world, most notably, for present purposes, the Third World. Community importantly determines questions of social inclusion, exclusion, identity, belonging and well-being. As is no surprise, the role and significance of community is well recognised in several academic disciplines today. Consider this one example. Recent literature on development has generally drawn attention to the potential benefits of participation in certain aspects of governance. More specifically, proposals for community participation have emerged in response to State failure, or now the pervasiveness of market exclusion. Community participation is motivated by several grievances, the most emphatic of which is the profound gap between the lived experiences of the poor and institutions that affect their lives. This gap between discourse and lived experience is more vividly evident in human rights practice, and this not only reflects the dominance, but also the inadequacies of State and market-based understandings alike. A fundamental aspect of this debate – largely overlooked by human rights discourse – is the role of community. Whilst there remain marginal references to community in certain aspects of human rights discourse, over all it has not sufficiently or comprehensively embraced community. More specifically, the Declaration of Right to Development, Rights-Based Approaches to Development and the World Bank‘s concept of good governance fail to offer an adequate role for community in human rights terms. Drawing from a range of literature in legal theory, political theory, philosophy and sociology, and developing its insights in the context of the supply of the – human right and – public good of electricity in Nigeria, the thesis offers a theory of community, which seeks to enable individuals, particularly, the poor and vulnerable, to organise themselves democratically, to claim ownership of the processes that determine their human rights.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo