Freedom, human rights, development
DOCUMENTS
Freedom Charter
June 1955: thousands of delegates adopted the Freedom Charter, which offered a vision for a unified, non-racial democratic South Africa, and was based on widespread consultation of the people. Initiated by the African National Congress, the document represented the statement of core principles for the ANC and its allies.
Arusha Declaration
February 1967: Julius Nyerere’s declaration articulated the foundation for African socialism and enshrined the values of self-reliance, equality and democracy in the years following colonial independence.
African Charter on Human and People’s Rights
Drafted in the Gambia (1980-1981), the charter created the African Commission on Human Rights (1987); the charter has become the reference document for the protection of human rights on the continent.
Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa
Adopted July 11, 2003: Informative site with interactive map of the African countries that have ratified the Maputo Protocol and provides details regarding scope of legal instruments, timeline for ratification, and complete text of protocol.
Ouagadougou Declaration
June 2015: Declaration in French of citizen’s movements in several African countries: Burkina Faso, Senegal, DRC, Togo, Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Mali, and Cameroon.
TOOLS
United Nations human development
Interactive database by country with human development data and related indices on gender, inequality, and multidimensional poverty.
Afrobarometer
Pan-African series of public attitude surveys on democracy, governance, and society since 1999.
Freedom House
Founded in 1941, with regional coverage on Africa, Freedom House analyzes the challenges to freedom, advocates for greater political rights and civil liberties, and supports frontline activists to defend human rights and promote democratic change.
Global Human Rights Direct
A portal with access to human rights news, contacts and information related to human rights worldwide.
FOR FURTHER STUDY
African Freedom: How Africa Responded to Independence
Online access via Cambridge Core Books. Allowing us to hear the voices of African artists and activists, this compelling study makes sense of their struggle and the broad importance of the idea of freedom in contemporary African culture.
Ethnologue
Offers profiles of African languages that are cross-linked to help see connections, map attitudes, religions and more.
Université Populaire pour l’Engagement Citoyen
2018, Dakar: University created to support activists in citizen-led movements across Africa and the diaspora, including Black Lives Matter.
Same Boats
Offers interactive visualizations that trace the movements of cultural actors from the Caribbean and wider Americas, Africa, and Europe within the 20th century Afro-Atlantic world.
Slave Voyages
Explores the dispersal of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic world via a digital memorial that raises questions and offers documentation available to answer them.
Reading Zimbabwe
Virtual archive that explores reading as freedom in Zimbabwe with an extensive, searchable repository.
Musical Passage
Documents the story of perhaps the first recording of African music in the diaspora by enslaved Africans whose descendants revolutionized global music.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Digital archive of text that recounts his life as a slave and his ambition to become a free man with related resources to pan-African study of freedom.
Two Plantations
Displays research into the lives of 431 enslaved people in seven multi-generational families at Mesopotamia plantation in Jamaica and Mount Airy plantation in Virginia.
Early Caribbean
Digital archive is an open access collection of pre-twentieth-century Caribbean texts, maps and images.
