Abstract
This issue of the International Journal of Discrimination and the Law is coming to you, our readership, in the midst of the global Covid-19 pandemic which, through its uneven impacts, has brought into such sharp focus the continuing and deepening inequalities experienced by many groups and individuals around the world. Although the articles featured in this issue were written before the onset of the current crisis, all three of them focus on the identification of appropriate responses to social, economic and cultural deprivation in very specific circumstances.
In three very different contexts, the articles raise common issues connected with the need to ensure that current legal and policy responses intended to overcome the causes and effects of specific disadvantage are fit for purposes and fully capable of achieving that aim. This capability goes beyond the provision of constitutional guarantees, carefully drafted legislation and appropriate judicial interpretation to encompass the underpinning rationale and ethos of such provision, which should be open to question and review, and extends to the effective realisation of the law through practices which promote and enable meaningful access to justice.
Jurgen Poesche in his article ‘Coloniality of Corporate Social Responsibility’ argues that the interrelationship between legal compliance and corporate social responsibility, rather than diminishing and eliminating coloniality, can reaffirm and enable its endurance in settler colonial states. Drawing on the example of the continuance of the occidental framework combining civil and common law in the context of the autonomy of Latin American indigenous nations, Poesche posits that the human rights discourse, having been made by and for colonial powers, perpetuates rather than alleviates existing inequalities rendering it incapable of providing a solid foundation for decoloniality.
In ‘Human Rights Education and the Plight of Vulnerable Groups with Specific Reference to People with Albinism in Tanzania’ John Cantius Mubangizi and Ines Kajiru argue that adequate and universal human rights education is necessary as a means of enabling vulnerable populations to use their rights effectively but also to equip wider society with the knowledge necessary to overcome traditional beliefs and related practices that can lead to the stigmatisation and persecution of minorities. The article draws on the well documented discrimination and violence suffered by persons with albinism in Tanzania driven by superstitious beliefs surrounding the causes and meaning of the condition to make a plea for an intensive public education programme regarding the true nature of albinism and widespread awareness-raising of the needs and human rights of those with the condition.
In his article ‘The Right to Freedom from Discrimination in Rwanda’ Jamil Mujuzi considers the specific legal and historical context of the development and operation of discrimination law in Rwanda which has occurred against the backdrop of the atrocities enacted in the ethnic genocide of 1994. Rwanda is one of very few African countries whose constitutions criminalise discrimination. In a detailed exploration of the 2003 Constitution, related legislation and ratification of international and regional human rights treaties, the author analyses the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on the criminalisation of discrimination which is aimed at ensuring that genocide never happens again in Rwanda.
If nothing else the current pandemic has highlighted the fragility of human life and the need for robust, meaningful and effective laws that can respond to and protect against contextual inequality, particularly for those who are marginalised by and excluded from mainstream social norms, practices and beliefs. Each of the articles in this issue provides a valuable contribution to this ongoing project. We hope you will enjoy reading and learning from them as much as we have.