Worldly encounters : the politics of global governance and Women’s Human Rights in East Africa.

Abstract

Global governance and international women's human rights campaigns are always translated and negotiated locally. This dissertation examines the complex politics of international women's human rights campaigns in East Africa by focusing on the social practices that characterize these projects. I investigate three campaigns to promote women's human rights and empowerment. First, I examine efforts to promote legal redress for Rwandan victims of sexual violence during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Second, I study projects seeking to eliminate "harmful traditional practices" such as female genital cutting in East Africa. I focus on initiatives in pastoralist villages in northern Tanzania, as well as efforts in Kenya and Uganda. Third, I turn my attention to emerging campaigns to promote African women's "empowerment" and entrepreneurialism through microcredit and microfinance. By exploring the socially-situated practices of international women's human rights campaigns - their translations and negotiations - this project seeks to illustrate how the boundaries and identities of global governance are unstably reconfigured and reproduced.