Law's happinessv: a decolonial approach to well-being and human rights

Abstract

Law and happiness are difficult concepts to define, and the relationship between the two is more so. Law’s happiness asks whether the law and its many subsets and impacts have a bearing on happiness. The current global order, rooted in ‘hetero-patriarchal capitalism’, functions upon the strength of a set of ‘western assumptions’- which must be interrogated if we are to understand why and how this global order contributes to human suffering.

National governments have historically focused too much on increasing economic growth, at the expense of the happiness of their people. Newer indices and evidence have illustrated an alternative guide to national policies that seek to measure and enhance the collective well-being of the people in a country. The human rights project also purports to look towards ensuring the happiness and well-being of all human beings, but is couched in a complicated history, and will inevitably maintain underlying systems of oppression if not subjected to rigorous scrutiny, as is warranted by a decolonial approach.

This research, thus, looks at happiness and human rights as intertwined concepts, particularly as have played out in the African context. The second chapter discusses human rights law in Africa contextualised against the backdrop of the colonial imposition and the current hetero-patriarchal capitalistic world order this has begotten. Happiness economics, the subject of the third chapter, is looked at broadly before considering the two published happiness metrics that this school of thought informs: The World Happiness Report and the Happy Planet Index. Thereafter the fourth chapter seeks to address the critiques proffered in the previous two chapters by looking to African philosophy. Ubuntu, ukama, and the spiral of time are considered, and the notion of Western is discussed and problematised. The conclusion is a concise set of recommendations bourn as a point of departure in finding law's happiness.