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Human Rights Week webinar: Africa, human rights, and transformation

15 March 2021

What do Africa, human rights, and transformation have to do with one another? Are human rights instruments for transformation in Africa, neo-colonial impositions, or the last refuge of the privileged? Is transformation a desirable goal for Africa, or a red herring to make us forget about the real work of decolonisation?

The Department of Public Law and the Free State Centre for Human Rights in the Faculty of Law at the University of the Free State invite you to a webinar on ‘Africa / Human rights / Transformation’ – a conversation with Johan Froneman, Dhaya Pillay, and Toyin Falola as part of Human Rights Week 2021.

The panel will discuss these and related issues from their perspectives as judges, academics, and politically aware Africans of different hues and origins. Prof Karin van Marle will be the moderator.

Date: 16 March 2021

Time: 15:00-16:30

Virtual event, details, and link to be provided upon RSVP to FSCHR@ufs.ac.za

Information on the speakers

Prof Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas, Austin, and an extraordinary professor in the Free State Centre for Human Rights, University of the Free State.

Judge Dhaya Pillay is a judge of the High Court of South Africa (KwaZulu-Natal), Commissioner on the Independent Electoral Commission, and extraordinary professor in the Free State Centre for Human Rights, University of the Free State.

Judge Johan Froneman is a retired judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, and extraordinary professor in the Department of Public Law at the University of the Free State.

Prof Karin van Marle is professor of Jurisprudence at the University of the Free State.

News Archive

UFS Professor on his new book on Boko Haram

2017-02-01

Description: Prof Hussein Solomon, Senior Professor Tags: Prof Hussein Solomon, Senior Professor

Prof Hussein Solomon, Senior Professor
in the Department of Political Studies and
Governance at the UFS and co-editor of the
book titled Understanding Boko Haram:
Terrorism and Insurgency in Africa.
Photo: Charl Devenish

Understanding the nature of the Boko Haram insurgency in northeast Nigeria is exactly what Prof Hussein Solomon from the Department of Political Studies and Governance at the University of the Free State (UFS) has set out to do.

Understanding the emergence of Boko Haram
Prof Solomon says tens of thousands of people have been killed in northeast Nigeria and neighbouring states as a result of the violence unleashed by the terrorist group. With the help of his co-editor, Prof Jim Hentz, who is an army colonel and lecturer at the Virginia Military Institute in the US, they set out to “understand the emergence of Boko Haram in a historical, sociological, economic and political context”.

In his book, titled Understanding Boko Haram: Terrorism and Insurgency in Africa, Prof Solomon “seeks to understand the emergence of Boko Haram in a historical, sociological, economic and political context”.

Book launch to take place in Chicago in the US
In his previous book, Islamic State and the Coming Global Confrontation, he analyses the origins and organisational structure of the Islamic State. Although an entirely new topic, but within the broad theme of political Islam, this book focuses more on how Boko Haram has become part of the Islamic State’s franchise in West Africa.

The book, which took more than a year to write, is based on secondary research, followed by primary documents and interviews done on the ground in Nigeria. It will be of much interest to students of terrorism and political violence, insurgencies, African politics, war and conflict studies, and international relations in general.

The official launch will take place at the African Studies Association’s annual meeting and takes place from 16-18 November 2017, in Chicago in the US.

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