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4 Transnat'l Hum. Rts. Rev. 28 (2017)
Assessing Universalism and the Rhetoric of Development Assistance in Human Rights Research: Canadian-Ghanaian Human Rights Engagements

handle is hein.journals/tranhurrv4 and id is 28 raw text is: CANADIAN-GHANIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ENGAGEMENTS ASSESSING UNIVERSALISM AND THE RHETORIC OF DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE IN HUMAN RIGHTS RESEARCH: CANADIAN-GHANAIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ENGAGEMENTS SYLVIA BAWA* Abstract This article is a contribution to the question of how Canada engages human rights in Ghana and Anglophone sub-Saharan Africa in general. In order to critically assess human rights engagement between Ghana and Canada, I situate the discussion within the broader global human rights milieu to deconstruct the myriad ways in which power dynamics in the global arena shape human rights practice and discourse. Using the rights concerns of women and minorities in Ghana as an entry point, I discuss the interconnected nature of first- and second-generation rights and cultural relativism in universal rights discourses. This discussion aims to propose a research agenda that will approach human rights in a more progressively transformative fashion. 1A. IN 2007, AFTER 50 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE from British Colonial Rule, Ghana made history by passing into law a bill aimed at combatting domestic violence. Women's rights leaders and activists jubilated. It had taken five years from the introduction of this Bill into Parliament to its passage. Rights activists imagined that this would be a simple task - after all, Ghana has ratified international conventions on women's rights and is hailed as a progressive country, as far as human rights and democracy are concerned in Africa. They had no idea that they would face a kind of opposition that was unprecedented in Ghana's history. Those that opposed the bill claimed that the demands of the women's movement were not cultural or, rather, that the women's movement was borrowing uncritically from western feminism. Activists responded that this was ridiculous, that violence is not part of Ghanaian culture. Like other activists, Adwoa, one of the participants in the interviews I conducted in Ghana has often critically engaged the question of Ghanaian culture. Which Culture? The one that allows men to wear suits and attend school while justifying obnoxious practices against women in the villages? That came from the British; let them * Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, York University, Toronto, Canada; PhD (Queen's University, Kingston, Canada; email: bawa@yorku.ca.

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