The right to culture and the culture of rights: a critical perspective on women’s sexual rights in Africa

The opposition of ‘culture’ and ‘rights’ is not uncommon in feminist legal discourse. This article argues that such an approach is fraught with danger as it creates an extremely restrictive framework within which African women can challenge domination; it limits our strategic interventions for transforming society and essentially plays into the hands of those seeking to perpetuate and solidify the existing structures of patriarchy. Drawing examples from a parallel research on Gender, Law and Sexuality, I propose that a more critical and interpretative approach to these two concepts may present a different perspective to portrayals of ‘tradition’ as constraining and/or fixed often displayed in mainstream feminist legal thinking.     

Feminism in a global era

Feminism is being re-shaped by its articulation through a global discourse of human rights and an increased focus on state interventions. This is partly a result of the transition in the gender regime changing the economic and political resources and opportunities open to women and partly due to globalization. Globalization has not only created difficulties for democratic governance, but it has also facilitated the development of new spaces, institutions and rhetoric where universal human rights is a powerful justificatory principle.     

To block or not to block – European child porno law in question

The EU Commission has proposed a new Directive on combating sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child pornography. The updated piece of legislation proposes to block access to child pornography websites. After months of negotiation, the Council, Parliament and Commission have agreed on a compromised text which generates more confusion and has been lambasted as meaningless. The compromised text is a result of powerful lobbying by Hollywood porno industry, Internet Service Providers and civil libertarians. The compromised text brings to highlight the tension between freedom of speech and protection of children.     

US war on terror EU SWIFT(ly) signs blank cheque on EU data

The EU and the United States signed the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (also known as SWIFT Agreement) agreement giving the US authorities access to bulk data containing the millions of records in the EU to enable the US authorities to trace financial transactions related to suspected terrorist activity (or to put it bluntly, against US interest). The SWIFT Agreement added some data protection safeguards, but the United States has been found to circumvent the agreement with the aid of the Europol. The EU Commission and the Europol have classified all documents concerning the SWIFT Agreement as secret. EU citizens confront a dark future where unelected EU bureaucrats continue to betray the trust of the people handing out bulk data to “counter terrorism” but at the same time undermining cherished values and violating human right standards and principles.     

30 years on - The review of the Council of Europe Data Protection Convention 108

The Council of Europe is engaging in a process of revising its Data Protection Convention (Convention 108) to meet and overcome these challenges. The Council of Europe celebrates this year the 30th Anniversary of its Data Protection Convention (usually referred to as Convention 108) which has served as the backbone of international law in over 40 European countries and has influenced policy and legislation far beyond Europe’s shores. With new data protection challenges arising every day, the Convention is revising its Data Protection Convention. Computer Law and Security Review (CLSR) together with the Intl. Association of IT Lawyers (IAITL) and ILAWS have submitted comments in response to the Expert Committee’s public consultation on this document. CLSR aims to position itself at the forefront of policy discussion drawing upon the high quality scholarly contributions from leading experts around the world.     

Voting at 16: Turnout and the quality of vote choice

Critics of giving citizens under 18 the right to vote argue that such teenagers lack the ability and motivation to participate effectively in elections. If this argument is true, lowering the voting age would have negative consequences for the quality of democracy. We test the argument using survey data from Austria, the only European country with a voting age of 16 in nation-wide elections. While the turnout levels of young people under 18 are relatively low, their failure to vote cannot be explained by a lower ability or motivation to participate. In addition, the quality of these citizens' choices is similar to that of older voters, so they do cast votes in ways that enable their interests to be represented equally well. These results are encouraging for supporters of a lower voting age.