Research Project: Human Rights, Power and Civic Action
Dates: 01 August 2008 - Ongoing
In collaboration with the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights at the University of Oslo, this new project commences in mid-2008. It is funded by the Research Council of Norway under their 'Poverty and Peace' programme. The project engages with a perceived shortcoming of rights-based approaches to development, that is a relative neglect of the dimension of power, with existent structures and relations of power acting as constraints on the realisation of rights. A three-year, five-country study, the project aims to examine and compare struggles for human rights by non-governmental actors in Cambodia, Ghana, Kenya, Nepal and Zimbabwe. It will examine the structures of power responsible for the negation and denial of human rights, as well as how rights-promoting organisations challenge such structures.
Professor Crawford is lead researcher for the Ghana case-study and also joint project co-ordinator with Professor Andreassen.
Working Papers
- Political Context Study– Ghana, Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai, January 09 [PDF: 376KB]
- Review of Rights Discourse - Ghana, Nana Akuya Anyidoho, March 09 [PDF: 523KB]
Papers from Research Findings Workshop - 3 December 2010
- Introduction - Prof. Gordon Crawford, University of Leeds [PPT:181 KB]
- Ghana Case Study - Dr Nana Akua Anyidoho, University of Ghana [PPT:568 KB]
- Cambodia Case Study - Prof. Stephen Marks, Harvard University [PDF: 4.2 MB]
- Findings on Kenya - Prof Bård A. Andreassen, University of Oslo [PPT:672 KB]