Quick Facts
Biography
Bonny Ibhawoh is an author and professor of global human rights and African Studies at McMaster University. His scholarship includes studies in the history of human rights, the cultural relativism of human rights, the right to development and peace/conflict studies. He is the author of several books on African History, Human Rights and Peace & Conflict studies including Imperialism and Human Rights , and Imperial Justice: Africans in Empire’s Court, and Human Rights in Africa (Cambridge University Press). He is a contributor to the GIAZILO blog - a blog on “Human Rights, Social Justice and Peace.”
Ibhawoh is a critic of absolute cultural relativism in the interpretation of human rights norms. He has argued that the cultural relativist stance has been dominated by urban-based elites whose perception of "cultural legitimacy" focuses on the idealized and invented traditions of collectivism, definitive gender roles, and conservative patriarchy in the interpretation of moral values. Ibhawoh is a recipiet of the John Holland Award for Professional Archivement. Ibhawoh is a member of the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada.
Career
Ibhawoh began his academic career as a lecturer at Bendel State University, Nigeria (now, Ambrose Alli University). He has held faculty appointments at the University of Lagos and Covenant University in Nigeria, Brock University, Canada, and the University of North Carolina at Asheville. He was a Human Rights Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, New York, Research Fellow at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, Copenhagen and Associate Member of the Centre for African Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
Books
- Human Rights in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)
- Uyilawa Usuanlele and Bonny Ibhawoh eds., Minority Rights and the National Question in Nigeria, (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2017)
- Imperial Justice: Africans in Empire’s Court (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)
- Imperialism and Human Rights: Colonial Discourses of Rights and Liberties in African History, (Albany, State University of New York Press, 2007) [Named American Library Association, Choice Outstanding Academic Title]
- Human Rights Organisations in Nigeria: An Appraisal Report on the Human Rights NGO community in Nigeria (Copenhagen: The Danish Centre for Human Rights).
- Between Culture and Constitution (Copenhagen, The Danish Institute for Human Rights, 1999).
- C O Okonkwo; Clement Nwankwo; Bonny Ibhawoh, Administration of juvenile justice in Nigeria, (Lagos: Constitutional Rights Project, 1997).
- Clement Nwankwo, Bonny Ibhawoh; Dulue Mbachu, The Failure of Prosecution: A Report on the Prosecution of Criminal Suspects in Nigeria (Lagos: Constitutional Rights Project, 1996).