Latin American and African Perspectives

Chr.Michelsen Institute (CMI) and The Democracy and Rule of Law Programme at University of Bergen invite you to a seminar on “Gender Justice and Legal Pluralities: Latin American and African Perspectives”

Anne Hellum and Rachel Sieder share perspectives, experiences and thoughts on gender justice and legal pluralities in Africa and Latin America based on long-term fieldworks and extensive scholarship on the subject.

Anne Hellum is a professor at the Department of Public and International Law at the University of Oslo. Hellum's research areas are women’s law, anthropology/sociology of law, human rights and development, and African law. Anne Hellum's research areas are women’s law, anthropology/sociology of law, human rights and development, and African law. She is the leader of the research group for Rights, Individuals, Culture and Society (RICS) at the Faculty of Law in Oslo and a she is a member of the interdisciplinary research group Cultural Complexity in the new Norway (CULCOM) at the University of Oslo. She is currently the project leader for the project "From formal to real rights: Minority women’s protection against discrimination in a culturally complex and transnational Norwegian context".Her recent publications include. “The Making and Unmaking of Unequal Property Relations between Men and Women: Shifting Policy Trajectories in South Africa's Land Restitution Process” (with Bill Derman) and “Observations on the Intersections of Human Rights and Local Practice A Livelihood Perspective on Water” (also with  Bill Derman) in  Water Rights: Enforcement Impediments (edited by  L, Lakshmi)

Rachel Sieder is a senior research professor at the Centro de Investigaciones y Educación Superior en Antropología Social (CIESAS) in Mexico City, and research fellow at the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London. Her research interests cover indigenous rights, human rights, judicial reform, access to justice, and legal pluralism. Her geographic area of specialization is Guatemala and Central America. She is currently heading research project on “Women and Law in Latin America” and “Poverty Reduction and Gender Justice in Contexts of Complex Legal Pluralism”. Her recent publications include Cultures of legality: Judicialization and political activism in Latin America (with Javier A. Couso, Alexandra Huneeus) and “Guatemala: Enduring Underdevelopment” in Politics in the Developing World (Ed. by Peter Burnell, Vicky Randall and Lise Rakner)