Editorial
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1358229120962700 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
Editorial
This issue of the International Journal of Discrimination and the Law is coming to you,
our readership, in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic which, through its uneven
impacts, has brought into such sharp focus the continuing and deepening inequalities
experienced by many groups and individuals around the world. Although the articles
featured in this issue were written before the onset of the current crisis, all three of them
focus on the identification of appropriate responses to social, economic and cultural
deprivation in very specific circumstances.
In three very different contexts, the articles raise common issues connected with the
need to ensure that current legal and policy responses intended to overcome the causes
and effects of specific disadvantage are fit for purposes and fully capable of achieving
that aim. This capability goes beyond the provision of constitutional guarantees, care-
fully drafted legislation and appropriate judicial interpretation to encompass the under-
pinning rationale and ethos of such provision, which should be open to question and
review, and extends to the effective realisation of the law through practices which
promote and enable meaningful access to justice.
Jurgen Poesche in his article ‘Coloniality of Corporate Social Responsibility’ argues
that the interrelationship between legal compliance and corporate social responsibility,
rather than diminishing and eliminating coloniality, can reaffirm and enable its endur-
ance in settler colonial states. Drawing on the example of the continuance of the occi-
dental framework combining civil and common law in the context of the autonomy of
Latin American indigenous nations, Poesche po sits that the human rights discourse,
having been made by and for colonial powers, perpetuates rather than alleviates existing
inequalities rendering it incapable of providing a solid foundation for decoloniality.
In ‘Human Rights Education and the Plight of Vulnerable Groups with Specific
Reference to People with Albinism in Tanzania’ John Cantius Mubangizi and Ines Kajiru
argue that adequate and universal human rights education is necessary as a means of
enabling vulnerable populations to use their rights effectively but also to equip wider
society with the knowledge necessary to overcome traditional beliefs and related prac-
tices that can lead to the stigmatisation and persecution of minorities. The article draws
on the well documented discrimination and violence suffered by persons with albinism in
Tanzania driven by superstitious beliefs surrounding the causes a nd meaning of the
condition to make a plea for an intensive public education programme regarding the
true nature of albinism and widespread awareness-raising of the needs and human rights
of those with the condition.
International Journalof
Discrimination and theLaw
2020, Vol. 20(2-3) 113–114
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1358229120962700
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