Andrew Tucker - Critically engaging with international human rights discourses and related ...

HKU CCPL Talk:
Critically engaging with international human rights discourses and related ascendent approaches to support sexuality-based justice in Africa

Date: 19 May 2023 (Friday)
Time: 12:30pm - 1:45pm
Venue: CCT723, 7/F, Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong

Abstract:
Significant interest of late has explored the utility and efficacy of discursively articulating international human rights with gay rights across the African continent with the intent to address sexuality-based discrimination in a range of countries. This presentation will first explore the utility of the deployment of such legal discourses to address sexuality-based discrimination before outlining, across three inter-related spheres, a series of challenges that can also emerge through such an approach. Such challenges, which pivot around concerns related to legitimacy, spatial inequality, and socio-spatial relationships potentially allow us to critically interrogate when and how human rights discourse may be effective or not based on the particularities of African development. Drawing on this framework developed in relation to human rights, this presentation then considers how the same three concerns may be effectively deployed to consider other internationally-derived approaches to support the needs of non-heteronormative groups on the continent, considering both their benefits, challenges, and potential trade-offs. To conclude, this presentation suggests that greater consideration can be given to the ways in which various international discourses and policy processes interface in different African contexts, and especially urban contexts.

Speaker:
Dr Andrew Tucker
Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town

Dr Andrew Tucker is an Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town. Prior to joining UCT, Tucker worked for a number of years on USAID-funded HIV programmes across the global South. He was earlier a lecturer in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Jesus College, and the Deputy Director of the Centre for Gender Studies at Cambridge. His work is currently exploring the relationships between international discourses and policy processes, sexuality and health, and African urban development.

Chairs:
Professor Marco Wan
Professor and Director of the Law and Literary Studies Programme, Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong

Dr Alvin Wong
Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, The University of Hong Kong

Co-organiser:
Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures, The University of Hong Kong