This study deals with the phenomenon of genocide denialism, and in particular how it operates in the context of the genocide against the Tutsi. The term genocide denialism denotes that we are not dealing with a single act or type of (genocide) denial but with a more elaborate process of denial that involves a variety of denialist and denial-like acts that are part of the process of genocide. From this study it becomes clear that the process of genocide thrives on a more elaborate denial dynamic than recognized in expert literature until now. This study consists of three parts. The first theoretical part analyses what the elements of denial and genocide entail and how they are (inter)related. The exploration results in a typology of genocide denialism. This model clarifies the different functions denial performs throughout the process of genocide. It furthermore explains how actors engage in denial and on which rhetorical devices speech acts of denial rely. The second part of the study focuses on denial in practice and it analyses how denial operates in the particular case of the genocide against the Tutsi. The analysis reveals a complex denial dynamic: not only those who perpetrated the genocide are involved in its denial, but also certain Western scholars, journalists, lawyers, etc. The latter were originally not involved in the genocide but recycle (elements of) the denial discourse of the perpetrators. The study addresses the implications of such recycling and discusses whether these actors actually have become involved in the genocidal process. This sheds light on the complex relationship between genocide and denial. The insights gained throughout the first two parts of this study have significant implications for many other actors that through their actions engage with the flow of meaning concerning the specific events in Rwanda or genocide in general. The final part of this study critically reflects on the actions of a variety of actors and their significance in terms of genocide denialism. These actors include scholars from various fields, human rights organisations, the ICTR, and the government of Rwanda. On a more fundamental level this study critically highlights how the revisionist scientific climate, in which knowledge and truth claims are constantly questioned, is favourable to genocide denialism and how the post-modern turn in academia has exacerbated this climate. Ultimately, this study reveals that the phenomenon of genocide denial involves more than perpetrators denying their genocidal crimes and the scope of actors and actions relevant in terms of genocide denialism is much broader than generally assumed.

Along with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights serves as the main watchdog for the promotion and protection of fundamental rights in the Americas. Drawing on the case law of the Court, this volume analyses crucial developments over the years on both procedural and substantive issues before the Inter-American Court. The book discusses access to legal aid, third party interventions, positive obligations and provisional measures, the evaluation of evidence and the use of external referencing by the Court, the protection of vulnerable groups, including indigenous peoples, migrants, women and children. It also explores other contemporary issues such as coerced statements, medical negligence, the use of force, amnesties, forced disappearances, the right to water, judicial protection in times of emergency, the relation of the Inter-American Court with national courts and with other international jurisdictions like the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court, and with national courts, reparations and revisions of cases by the Inter-American Court, and present-day challenges to the Inter-American system of human rights. Due to its multifaceted and comprehensive character, this scholarly volume is an essential reference work for both legal scholars and practitioners working with regional human rights systems in general and with the Inter-American human rights system in particular.

In recent decades there has been an explosion in work in the social and physical sciences describing the similarities between human and nonhuman as well as human and non-animal thinking. This work has explicitly decentered the brain as the sole, self-contained space of thought, and it has found thinking to be an activity that operates not only across bodies but also across bodily or cellular membranes, as well as multifaceted organic and inorganic environments. For example, researchers have looked at the replication and spread of slime molds (playfully asking what would happen if they colonized the earth) to suggest that they exhibit 'smart behavior' in the way they move as a potential way of considering the spread of disease across the globe. Other scholars have applied this model of non-human thought to the reach of data mining and global surveillance. In The Biopolitics of Alphabets and Embryos, Ruth Miller argues that these types of phenomena are also useful models for thinking about the growth, reproduction, and spread of political thought and democratic processes. Giving slime, data and unbounded entities their political dues, Miller stresses their thinking power and political significance and thus challenges the anthropocentrism of mainstream democratic theories. Miller emphasizes the non-human as highly organized, systemic and productive of democratic growth and replication. She examines developments such as global surveillance, embryonic stem cell research, and cloning, which have been characterized as threats to the privacy, dignity, and integrity of the rational, maximizing and freedom-loving democratic citizen. By shifting her level of analysis from the politics of self-determining subjects to the realm of material environments and information systems, Miller asks what might happen if these alternative, nonhuman thought processes become the normative thought processes of democratic engagement.

Over the past twenty years, National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) have moved from the periphery to the centre of the human rights debate. The potential of NHRIs to transmit and implement international norms at the domestic level, and to transfer human rights expertise to regional and global human rights fora, is increasingly recognised. In Europe, the continent with the widest variety and density of human rights protection mechanisms, NHRIs are also gradually gaining recognition as actors that can enable more comprehensive and effective human rights promotion and protection. This book, the result of a COST conference held in Leuven in April 2012, focuses on the functioning and role of NHRIs in Europe in a comparative, European and international perspective. At a time when the European Union is looking for a more coherent and strategic human rights policy, it is important that policy makers and academics pay more attention to the potential role of NHRIs. By bringing together contributions from academics and practitioners, this volume offers insights into the opportunities and challenges that accompany the increasing emergence of NHRIs in Europe and their proliferation on the multiple levels of human rights promotion and protection. Accordingly, this volume aims to inform and further trigger the NHRI debate in Europe.

Children's rights and human development is a new and uncharted domain in human rights and psychology research. This multidisciplinary children's rights reader is a first attempt to introduce this domain to students and researchers of children's rights, child development, child maltreatment, family and child studies, and related fields. For many lawyers, children's rights are limited to their legal dimension: the norms and institutions of international human rights law, often with an exclusive focus on the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its monitoring treaty body, the Committee on the Rights of the Child. However, there are three more dimensions to children's rights. Children's rights share a moral and a political dimension with all human rights, which most non-international lawyers all too often overlook. And children's rights have a fourth dimension: the time dimension of child and human development. This time dimension is multidisciplinary in itself. Human development begins nine months before childbirth. When we are four years of age, our brain is 90% adult size. The infrastructure of our personality, health, and resilience is formed in our first years of life, determined by the quality and sheer quantity of parent-child interaction and secure attachment formation. Yet, more than one third of children are not securely attached. According to research published in The Lancet in 2009, one in ten children in high income countries is maltreated. Violence against children is a worldwide plague. Socio-economic and socio-emotional deprivation are still transmitted from generation to generation in both rich and poor states. Investing in early childhood development, positive parenting, and child rights education makes sense. This book brings together substantial and fascinating texts from many fields and disciplines that illustrate and elaborate this point. Arranged in ten chapters titled according to pertinent child rights principles and concepts, these texts offer a state-of-the-art view of the enormous progress made in the past decades in several fields of human knowledge. In between these texts, several news and factual items inform the reader on the huge gap that still exists between what we know and what we do to make this world a better place for children, to promote human development, and to protect human rights better. Child rights violations are still met with more rhetoric than leadership. But change is on its way. The book's contents may be used both as background readings and as tasks for group discussion in problem-based learning or other educational settings in child rights law and psychology courses. It is also aimed at a broader academic and public audience interested in the many aspects and ramifications of children's rights and human development.

The Elgar Encyclopedia of Human Rights is the most comprehensive reference work in the field of international human rights protection. Comprising over 340 entries, presented alphabetically, and available online and in print, the Encyclopedia addresses the full range of themes associated with the study and practice of human rights in the modern world. Topics range from substantive human rights to the relevant institutions, legal documents, conceptual and procedural issues of international law and a wide variety of thematic entries. The Encyclopedia has a distinct focus on international human rights law but at the same time is enriched by approaches from the broader social sciences, making it a truly unique and multi-disciplinary resource. The Encyclopedia boasts an incredibly diverse author team, featuring contributions from close to 300 scholars and practitioners from more than 65 countries, representing all regions of the world. Contributors include leading experts in their respective fields - among them current and former UN Special Rapporteurs and Independent Experts, renowned academics, judges of national, international and regional (human rights) courts, members of universal and regional human rights bodies, members of the International Law Commission, as well as legal advisors of foreign offices and international and non-governmental organizations. Key Features: Over 340 entries Entries organized alphabetically for ease of navigation Fully cross-referenced Entries written by practitioners and scholars from around the world World class editorial team

While the 1960s marked a rights revolution in the United States, the subsequent decades have witnessed a rights revolution around the globe, a revolution that for many is a sign of the advancement of democracy. But is the act of rights claiming a form of political contestation that advances democracy? Rights language is ubiquitous in national and international politics today, yet nagging suspicions remain about the compatibility between the practice of rights claiming and democratic politics. While critics argue that rights reinforce ways of thinking and being that undermine democratic values and participatory practices, even champions worry that rights lack the legitimacy and universality necessary to bring democratic aspirations to fruition.
Making Rights Claims provides a unique entree into these important and timely debates. Rather than simply taking a side for or against rights claiming, the book argues that understanding and assessing the relationship between rights and democracy requires a new approach to the study of rights. Zivi combines insights from speech act theory with recent developments in democratic and feminist thought to develop a theory of the performativity of rights claiming. If we understand rights claims as performative utterances and acts of persuasion, we come to see that by saying "I have a right," we constitute and reconstitute ourselves as democratic citizens, shape our communities, and transform constraining categories of identity in ways that may simultaneously advance and challenge aspects of democracy. Furthermore, we begin to understand that rights claiming is not a wholly rule bound practice. To illustrate her theory, Zivi discusses different sides of two recent rights debates: mandatory HIV testing of pregnant women and the new immigration laws."

Why do decision-makers in similar liberal democracies interpret the same legal definition in very different ways? International law provides states with a common definition of a 'refugee' as well as guidelines outlining how asylum claims should be decided. Yet, the processes by which countries determine who should be granted refugee status look strikingly different, even across nations with many political, cultural, geographical, and institutional commonalities. This book compares the refugee status determination (RSD) regimes of three popular asylum seeker destinations - the United States, Canada, and Australia. Despite similarly high levels of political resistance to accepting asylum seekers across these three states, once asylum seekers cross their borders, they access three very different systems. These differences are significant both in terms of asylum seekers' experience of the process and in terms of their likelihood of being found to be a refugee.
The book moves beyond the claim by some scholars that asylum seeker destinations are uniformly becoming more exclusionary, and the contrary assertions of other scholars that the same destinations are converging on a new inclusive internationalism leading to the decline of state sovereignty. Instead, Hamlin finds these states to be running on three distinct trajectories, none of which are totally restrictive or expansive. Based on a multi-method analysis of all three countries, including a year of fieldwork with in-depth interviews of policy-makers and asylum-seeker advocates, observations of refugee status determination hearings, and a large-scale case analysis, Hamlin finds that cross-national differences have less to do with political debates over admission and border control policy than with the level of insulation the administrative decision-making agency enjoys from either political interference or judicial review. Administrative justice is conceptualized and organized differently in every state, and so states vary in how they draw the line between refugee and non-refugee.

Americans have a deeply ambivalent relationship to guns. The United States leads all nations in rates of private gun ownership, yet stories of gun tragedies frequent the news, spurring calls for tighter gun regulations. The debate tends to be acrimonious and is frequently misinformed and illogical. The central question is the extent to which federal or state governments should regulate gun ownership and use in the interest of public safety. In this volume, David DeGrazia and Lester Hunt examine this policy question primarily from the standpoint of ethics: What would morally defensible gun policy in the United States look like? Hunt's contribution argues that the U.S. Constitution is right to frame the right to possess a firearm as a fundamental human right. The right to arms is in this way like the right to free speech. More precisely, it is like the right to own and possess a cell phone or an internet connection. A government that banned such weapons would be violating the right of citizens to protect themselves. This is a function that governments do not perform: warding off attacks is not the same thing as punishing perpetrators after an attack has happened. Self-protection is a function that citizens must carry out themselves, either by taking passive steps (such as better locks on one's doors) or active ones (such as acquiring a gun and learning to use it safely and effectively). DeGrazia's contribution features a discussion of the Supreme Court cases asserting a constitutional right to bear arms, an analysis of moral rights, and a critique of the strongest arguments for a moral right to private gun ownership. He follows with both a consequentialist case and a rights-based case for moderately extensive gun control, before discussing gun politics and advancing policy suggestions. In debating this important topic, the authors elevate the quality of discussion from the levels that usually prevail in the public arena. DeGrazia and Hunt work in the discipline of academic philosophy, which prizes intellectual honesty, respect for opposing views, command of relevant facts, and rigorous reasoning. They bring the advantages of philosophical analysis to this highly-charged issue in the service of illuminating the strongest possible cases for and against (relatively extensive) gun regulations and whatever common ground may exist between these positions.

This is a concise and accessible introduction to fundamental rights in Europe from the perspectives of history, theory and an analysis of European jurisprudence. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, the book equips readers with the tools to understand the foundations and the functioning of this complex and multi-layered topic. Key Features: A combination of historical and philosophical approaches with analysis of significant legal cases A multidisciplinary outlook, in contrast to the strict legal approach of most textbooks on the subject A European perspective which refers throughout to central European values such as freedom, equality, solidarity and dignity A specific focus on fundamental rights, which have received less attention in the fields of legal history and theory in comparison to human rights This textbook will be an important resource for both undergraduate and postgraduate students in law, philosophy and political science. It will be particularly useful to those studying the law of fundamental rights or human rights as a complement to more traditional legal approaches.

This book is based upon a lecture series inaugurating the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights that took place in Winnipeg, Canada between September 2013 and May 2014. Fragile Freedoms brings together some of the most influential contemporary thinkers on the theory and practice of human rights. The first two chapters, by Anthony Grayling and Steven Pinker, are primarily historical: they trace the emergence of human rights to a particular time and place, and they try to show how that emergence changed the world for the better. The next two chapters, by Martha Nussbaum and Kwame Anthony Appiah, are normative arguments about the philosophical foundations of human rights. The final three chapters, by John Borrows, Baroness Helena Kennedy, and Germaine Greer, are innovative applications of human rights to indigenous peoples, globalization and international law, and women. Wide ranging in its philosophical perspectives and implications, this volume is an indispensable contribution to the contemporary thinking on the rights that must be safeguarded for all people.

Deborah Posel breaks new ground in exposing some of the crucial political processes and struggles which shaped the reciprocal development of Apartheid and capitalism in South Africa. Her analysis debunks the orthodoxy view which presents apartheid as the product of a single `grand plan', created by the State in response to the pressures of capital accumulation. Using as a case study influx control during the first phase of apartheid (1948-1961), she shows that apartheid arose from complex patterns of conflict and compromise within the State, in which white capitalists, the black working class, and popular movements exercised varying and uneven degrees of influence. Her book integrates a detailed empirical analysis of the capitalist State and its relationship to class interests.

First published in 1917, Satow's Diplomatic Practice has long been hailed as a classic and authoritative text. An indispensable guide for anyone working in or studying the field of diplomacy, this seventh, centenary edition builds on the extensive revision in the sixth edition. The volume provides an enlarged and updated section on the history of diplomacy, including the exponential growth in multilateral diplomacy, and revises comprehensively the practice of diplomacy and the corpus of diplomatic and international law since the end of the Cold War. It traces the substantial expansion in numbers both of sovereign states and international and regional organisations and features detailed chapters on diplomatic privileges and immunities, diplomatic missions, and consular matters, treaty-making and conferences. The volume also examines alternative forms of diplomacy, from the work of NGOs to the use of secret envoys, as well as a study of the interaction with intelligence agencies and commercial security firms. It also discusses the impact of international terrorism and other violent non-state actors on the life and work of a diplomat. Finally, in recognition of the speed of changes in the field over the last ten years, this seventh edition examines the developments and challenges of modern diplomacy through new chapters on human rights and public/digital diplomacy by experts in their respective fields.

Human Rights Watch's World Report 2014 is the global rights watchdog's flagship 24th annual review of global trends and news in human rights. An invaluable resource for journalists, diplomats, and citizens, it features not only incisive country surveys but also hard-hitting essays highlighting key human rights issues and striking photo essays by award-winning photographers. Customers outside of the UK and Europe: copies are available from Sevenstories.com

This forward-looking book provides an in-depth analysis of the major transformations of the right to health in Latin America over the past decades, marked by the turn towards the pharmaceuticalisation of health care. Everaldo Lamprea-Montealegre investigates how health-based litigation has deepened inequalities in the global South, exploring the practices of key actors that are reclaiming the right to health in the region. Taking a deep dive into the health care systems of Brazil and Colombia, Local Maladies, Global Remedies illustrates how transnational pharmaceutical companies are influencing the litigation of health rights, from moulding doctors' preferences for branded drugs to controlling the availability of cheaper generics and bio-similars. The book deploys a wide range of theoretical perspectives and insights from socio-legal literature to map out the practices of stakeholders that are reclaiming the right to health in Latin America. Its concluding remarks propose a set of remedies to help alleviate the challenges faced by global South countries when trying to guarantee their population's right to health, ultimately calling for a major shift of decision-making responsibilities from a local to a global level. The wide-ranging, interdisciplinary scope of this cutting-edge book will benefit scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and students operating at the intersections between socio-legal studies, sociology, health anthropology, public health, globalisation, and human rights.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. David P. Forsythe presents a compelling introduction to international human rights in a political context. He stresses the difficulties of interjecting human rights into foreign policy and international politics, while recognising the considerable progress that has been made over time. Focusing on international organizations, states, corporations, and private advocacy groups, Forsythe addresses key themes including war, migration, climate change, and slavery. Key features include: a multidisciplinary approach that draws on findings in political science, law, diplomacy, history, and economics discussion of a broad range of both traditional and contemporary topics from the United Nations to the internet and pandemics an assessment of the progress made in promoting human rights and humanitarian ideas, and how these ideas translate into tangible improvements for human dignity. Adopting a politically realistic and historically informed perspective, this Advanced Introduction will be a valuable resource for students of human rights, international relations, and political science.

Providing a range of different perspectives on some of the peoples who have inhabited various parts of Britain, this book combats the popular myth and media image that migrants and minorities are new to the British Isles. Included is Shivdeep Grewal's article on Southall, which is derived from his documentary film, "Remembering Southall. Keith Copley and Cronain O'Kelly offer comparable perspectives on the attitudes of British labor to Ireland, and an essay by Stephen Hipkin looks at property relations and rural conflict in early modern England, taking as his reference point the work of Robert Brenner.

The issue of human rights and its contemporary theory has drawn the attention of the author for a long period of time. Specifically, the rights of two groups of citizens of our planet that have existed next to one another for as long as the world has been turning a " the perpetrators of crimes and their victims. And, unfortunately, this will never change. To learn more about the author please visit his website at www.stanik.name and www.kosmas.cz. Also published by Zsolt StanA k (in English) are in printed form and available on www.amazon.co.uk: An Angel in Hell, Humour at its Best, Joy Till Death and I Forgive You One Sin on www.fast-print.net/bookshop: Farewell to Bad Times and I Forgive You One Sin on www.kosmas.cz: Ita s enough to drive you crazy (as an E-book)

This timely book investigates emerging efforts to govern artificial intelligence (AI) at an international level. It emphasizes the complex interactions involved when creating international norms related to potential and current developments in AI regulation. Organized into four parts, The International Governance of Artificial Intelligence demonstrates how formal and informal standards for AI are emerging from stakeholder interactions. With the objective of describing a nascent transnational law on AI use, chapters survey the various global realities that affect AI governance, concluding that AI law should ultimately be evaluated against the measure of international human rights. Students of law and governance will benefit from this book, particularly when studying emerging technologies, international economic law and general international law. Those researching policy creation and regulation will additionally find it to be an enlightening read.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. This thought-provoking introduction provides an incisive overview of dignity law, a field of law emerging in every region of the globe that touches all significant aspects of the human experience. Through an examination of the burgeoning case law in this area, James R. May and Erin Daly reveal a strong overlapping consensus surrounding the meaning of human dignity as a legal right and a fundamental value of nations large and small, and how this global jurisprudence is redefining the relationship between individuals and the state. Key features include: Analyses of cases from a range of jurisdictions all over the world A history of the shift of the concept of dignity from a philosophical idea to a legally enforceable right Discussion of dignity as a value and a right in different major legal contexts, and its roots in African, Asian, European and Islamic traditions. This Advanced Introduction will be invaluable to scholars and students of law, particularly those interested in human rights, looking to understand this emerging area of law. It will inform lawyers, judges, policymakers and other advocates interested in how dignity and the law can be used to protect everyone, including the most vulnerable among us.

Virtually everyone supports religious liberty, and virtually everyone opposes discrimination. But how do we handle the hard questions that arise when exercises of religious liberty seem to discriminate unjustly? How do we promote the common good while respecting conscience in a diverse society? This point-counterpoint book brings together leading voices in the culture wars to debate such questions: John Corvino, a longtime LGBT-rights advocate, opposite Ryan T. Anderson and Sherif Girgis, prominent young social conservatives. Many such questions have arisen in response to same-sex marriage: How should we treat county clerks who do not wish to authorize such marriages, for example; or bakers, florists, and photographers who do not wish to provide same-sex wedding services? But the conflicts extend well beyond the LGBT rights arena. How should we treat hospitals, schools, and adoption agencies that can't in conscience follow antidiscrimination laws, healthcare mandates, and other regulations? Should corporations ever get exemptions? Should public officials? Should we keep controversial laws like the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or pass new ones like the First Amendment Defense Act? Should the law give religion and conscience special protection at all, and if so, why? What counts as discrimination, and when is it unjust? What kinds of material and dignitary harms should the law try to fight-and what is dignitary harm, anyway? Beyond the law, how should we treat religious beliefs and practices we find mistaken or even oppressive? Should we tolerate them or actively discourage them? In point-counterpoint format, Corvino, Anderson and Girgis explore these questions and more. Although their differences run deep, they tackle them with civility, clarity, and flair. Their debate is an essential contribution to contemporary discussions about why religious liberty matters and what respecting it requires.

When a country experiences a civil war, media reports are mainly brought to the attention of the outside world by those who can only report on the surface impressions obtained during a short visit or from the comfort of a studio thousands of miles away. My experiences, living and working at the grass roots level, during and after the crisis in Nigeria in the 1960s has a different perspective. As a young Scotswoman married to a Nigerian from the breakaway republic of Biafra we lived as refugees with our young family, forced to leave our home seven times in the 30 months of the civil war as the war raged around us. Cut off from the outside world, in a situation the British High Commissioner in Nigeria had predicted at the onset, would be over in two weeks, we lived a life full of experiences which gave me a `qualification in survival' no university could have imparted. Without electricity, gas, petrol or phones, and often without money, medicine or safe drinking water we learned to appreciate the basic necessities of life. I was 18 years old, living in Dunfermline, Scotland when the man I was to marry asked me for a dance at the Kinema Ballroom. Two years later my career plan to qualify as a nurse was over and I was married to Len Ofoegbu, with a baby daughter and we were on our way to a new and very different life. Our first home was in the capital, Lagos, and was a big culture shock to Len and I. The newly independent West African country was already experiencing political and civil unrest, leading to violence, massacres, coups, and the inability of the central government to control the situation. Hundreds of thousands of Easterners who had settled throughout the whole of the country now `went home' as they had become the targets of slaughtering mobs. The secession of the Eastern Region, calling itself Biafra, followed and a David and Goliath bitter conflict ensued. The word `kwashiorkor' and pictures of starving children and adults appeared in the Western press for the first time. I was one of around a dozen, mainly British, foreign wives of Biafrans who remained with their husband throughout the civil war. I worked voluntarily with relief agencies in feeding centres, clinics, an orphanage and, after Biafra surrendered in January 1970, in a children's hospital in return for food for my growing family. In May 1970 we moved back to live in Lagos where we went through more crises as a family. I became an early member of Nigerwives, an organisation for foreign wives and partners of Nigerians which became like an extended family as we gave mutual support and strove to resolve anomalies in Nigerian laws which put unnecessary restrictions affecting our particular circumstances. By the 1980s I accepted that my husband and I had grown so far apart that I could no longer remain with him. My legal reason to remain in Nigeria was `to accompany him' and he could withdraw his immigration responsibility for me at any time. I needed a security which he could not give me and I left him and Nigeria to begin a new life and career in Britain in 1985. I was advised when I completed the original manuscript in the 1970s not have it published as Nigeria was extremely sensitive about any account which was sympathetic to the Biafran side of the civil war. In 1986 a much shorter version of Together in Biafra, titled Blow The Fire, telling the story up to 1970 was printed by Tana Press in Nigeria. I retain the copyright. It was published under my married name Leslie Jean Ofoegbu. It has been cited in academic papers. An example is A Lingering Nightmare: Achebe, Ofoegbu and Adichie on Biafra, Francoise Ugochukwu 2011.

When a country experiences a civil war, media reports are mainly brought to the attention of the outside world by those who can only report on the surface impressions obtained during a short visit or from the comfort of a studio thousands of miles away. My experiences, living and working at the grass roots level, during and after the crisis in Nigeria in the 1960s has a different perspective. As a young Scotswoman married to a Nigerian from the breakaway republic of Biafra we lived as refugees with our young family, forced to leave our home seven times in the 30 months of the civil war as the war raged around us. Cut off from the outside world, in a situation the British High Commissioner in Nigeria had predicted at the onset, would be over in two weeks, we lived a life full of experiences which gave me a `qualification in survival' no university could have imparted. Without electricity, gas, petrol or phones, and often without money, medicine or safe drinking water we learned to appreciate the basic necessities of life. I was 18 years old, living in Dunfermline, Scotland when the man I was to marry asked me for a dance at the Kinema Ballroom. Two years later my career plan to qualify as a nurse was over and I was married to Len Ofoegbu, with a baby daughter and we were on our way to a new and very different life. Our first home was in the capital, Lagos, and was a big culture shock to Len and I. The newly independent West African country was already experiencing political and civil unrest, leading to violence, massacres, coups, and the inability of the central government to control the situation. Hundreds of thousands of Easterners who had settled throughout the whole of the country now `went home' as they had become the targets of slaughtering mobs. The secession of the Eastern Region, calling itself Biafra, followed and a David and Goliath bitter conflict ensued. The word `kwashiorkor' and pictures of starving children and adults appeared in the Western press for the first time. I was one of around a dozen, mainly British, foreign wives of Biafrans who remained with their husband throughout the civil war. I worked voluntarily with relief agencies in feeding centres, clinics, an orphanage and, after Biafra surrendered in January 1970, in a children's hospital in return for food for my growing family. In May 1970 we moved back to live in Lagos where we went through more crises as a family. I became an early member of Nigerwives, an organisation for foreign wives and partners of Nigerians which became like an extended family as we gave mutual support and strove to resolve anomalies in Nigerian laws which put unnecessary restrictions affecting our particular circumstances. By the 1980s I accepted that my husband and I had grown so far apart that I could no longer remain with him. My legal reason to remain in Nigeria was `to accompany him' and he could withdraw his immigration responsibility for me at any time. I needed a security which he could not give me and I left him and Nigeria to begin a new life and career in Britain in 1985. I was advised when I completed the original manuscript in the 1970s not have it published as Nigeria was extremely sensitive about any account which was sympathetic to the Biafran side of the civil war. In 1986 a much shorter version of Together in Biafra, titled Blow The Fire, telling the story up to 1970 was printed by Tana Press in Nigeria. I retain the copyright. It was published under my married name Leslie Jean Ofoegbu. It has been cited in academic papers. An example is A Lingering Nightmare: Achebe, Ofoegbu and Adichie on Biafra, Francoise Ugochukwu 2011.