Human Rights in the Gold Coast (1945-57): The Politics of Difference and Struggle for Rights (PB) (2017)

Human rights is a specific 'truth regime' on what it means to be a human being. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirmed the idea that every human being has rights by virtue of being human. A paradigmatic rights-holder of UDHR represented every human being. This book analyses how the concept of human rights, affirmed in the 1945 United Nations Charter and articulated in the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights, influenced domestic politics in one British colony in sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, the study highlights the way in which post-World War II nationalism produced some of the most important political changes affecting this region in the period leading up to independence. The theoretical proposition is supported by a case study of the deployment of the idea of human rights in the Gold Coast from 1945 up to Ghana's independence from colonial rule in 1957.

Relying on a first-hand investigation of archival and primary sources, the book scrutinizes the formulation of demands for the collective right to self-determination which emanated from nationalist movements, the debates on whether or not to extend the European Convention on Human Rights to the Gold Coast, and the evolution of drafts for a bill of rights in Ghana's Independence Constitution. The particular and under-privileged position of women in the colony is a subject of critical commentary throughout the book. By examining the emergence of the human rights idea, the study draws attention to the interplay of factors and actors that inspired a new-fangled notion of universal rights, while highlighting the way politics, including Cold War politics, contributed to define the subject of human rights in an ambiguous, incomplete but promising way.