Strengthening children’s rights in Africa: Some lessons from the new Children’s Act of Angola
Posted: 4 June, 2013 Filed under: Aquinaldo Mandlate | Tags: Africa, African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC), Angola, basic education, children, children's rights, Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), culture, food, juvenile justice, life expectancy, literacy, Mozambique, nutrition, socio-economic rights, sports, violence against children 2 Comments
Author: Aquinaldo Mandlate
LLD (UWC), LLM (UP) Licenciatura em Direito (UCM)
On 22 August 2012, Angola enacted a new Children’s Act, adding to the number of African countries (including South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Lesotho, and many others) which reviewed their legislation focusing on children’s rights. Angolan law, like many other recent African legislation on children, is comprehensive and detailed in multiple aspects of children’s rights. Some of its features are common in other similar instruments in the region. For instance, it protects children’s civil and political rights and their socio-economic rights. The right to life, the right to health and the right to basic education, amongst others are protected. In addition, the law entrenches the four principles forming the core of international and regional treaties dealing with children’s rights (the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) included), including the principles of non-discrimination (Article 2 of the CRC and Article 3 of the ACRWC), best interest of the child (Article 3 of the CRC and Article 4 of the ACRWC), the right to life survival and development (Article of the 6 CRC and Article 5 of the ACRWC), and the right of the child to participate (Article 12 CRC and Article 7 of the ACRWC). These principles are also part and parcel of other modern African child legislation.
A detailed account of the similarities between the Angolan Children’s Act and other instruments falls beyond the objectives of this contribution. However, I would like to highlight some of the major contributions (amongst others not discussed here) as a result of the Act, in efforts to advance children’s rights.
Right to food: A ‘black and white’ choice?
Posted: 25 April, 2013 Filed under: Bereket Kefyalew | Tags: ACHPR, Africa, African Commission, CEDAW, civil society, Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), CRC, democracy, Ethiopia, food security, human rights, ICCPR, ICESCR, NGOs, right to food, UDHR 3 Comments
Author: Bereket Kefyalew
Freelancer based in Copenhagen, Denmark
The Ethiopian government often associates its developmental ideology with the East Asian model, while at the same time defining itself as a progressive democratic government. Paradoxically, the government defends itself from prodemocracy critics by arguing that food security comes first, then slowly comes democracy. Within this context, I analyse the right to food as a legal concept and how it can be used as a means to achieve food security in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia has ratified and adopted the main instruments establishing the right to food such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the Covenant on the Rights of the Child; the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women; and the African Charter on Peoples’ Rights. Ethiopia is also bound by international humanitarian law, having ratified the Geneva Convention of 1999 and the Additional Protocols thereto of 1977.
Homosexuality v. homophobia, which is criminal?
Posted: 21 January, 2013 Filed under: Joelle Dountio | Tags: Africa, African traditions, civil rights, corrective rape, female genital mutilation, HIV/Aids, homophobia, homosexuality, human rights, International Bill of Rights, international human rights, political rights, privacy, religion, right to freedom of association, Rwanda, traditional cultural beliefs 7 Comments
Author: Joelle Dountio
PhD candidate, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria
Religion, traditional cultural beliefs and law are all used by humans to fuel hatred, stigma, and discrimination towards homosexuals. The rights to equality, non-discrimination and freedom from torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as upheld by the International Bill of Rights and other human rights instruments are, for the most part, all recognised in the constitutions and other national laws of most African countries. However, 36 of the 54 African countries have punitive laws on homosexuality. Meanwhile, homosexuality is a sexual orientation and a prohibited ground for discrimination under international human rights law (Toonen v. Australia).
Historically, religion has been used to justify some of the worst atrocities committed against human beings. Some of these atrocities include: slavery, the holocaust, apartheid, racism and terrorism. Today, the Bible is used to justify homophobia based on the famous kingdoms of Sodom and Gomorrah. The question I ask is, does the Bible really mean that we should kill these people as is happening today? And even if it does mean this, what about other practices for which the Bible says people should be killed? This Bible says married women who have sexual relations outside their marriage should be killed. The Bible says we should sell all we have and give the money to the poor. The Bible says we should not make carved images of anything in heaven. Why do Christians not apply these? Apparently man chooses to follow only those sections of the Bible which suit him and enable him to meet his selfish goal irrespective of the consequences to others. Is this not hypocrisy?
An intra-african dialogue in the new era of constitutionalism
Posted: 2 April, 2012 Filed under: Charles Fombad | Tags: Africa, ancl, constitutionalism, law, South African Constitution, South African Constitutional Court 9 Comments
Author: Prof Charles Fombad
Professor, Centre for Human Rights; Head, Unit on Comparative African Constitutional Law at the Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa
For perhaps too long, the conventional wisdom has been that the best can come only from abroad; meaning Europe and America. From the perspective of constitutional law, the South African Constitution did more than just provide a clean break with the past. It provided a modern constitution which successfully borrowed and adapted many of the best principles from some of the major modern European constitutional models to fit with the realities of the country. Whilst not perfect, and there shall never be a perfect constitution, it shows how Africans can creatively find solutions to their problems.But it is perhaps the South African Constitutional Court, through the voluminous amount of jurisprudence that it has produced since 1995,that has attracted the most attention from constitutional experts all over the world and given rise to the feeling that the centre of modern constitutionalism might well be moving to Africa. For a continent that has been obsessed with blindly copying from the former colonial powers, there are many reasons to start looking at itself.Even the 1990s constitutional reforms in other African countries were still influenced by the inherited colonial constitutional models.
Reform needed in the laws of demonstrations in Africa
Posted: 2 April, 2012 Filed under: Christof Heyns | Tags: Africa, Arab-spring, demonstrations, human rights, Human Rights Council, law, law enforcement, United Nations, use of force 1 Comment
Author: Prof Christof Heyns
Professor of Human Rights Law; Co-director, Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa at the University of Pretoria; United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions
Many lives have recently been lost in Africa, as in other parts of the world, when demonstrations have turned fatally violent. This has been clearly seen inthe countries of the so-called Arab Spring, but numerous Sub-Saharan countries – Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Malawi and South Africa come to mind – have also experienced violent and indeed deadly marches.
These demonstrations reveal the need to bring the legal and policy regimes that govern such expressions of popular opinion into line with human rights standards.
Welcome to the AfricLaw Blog
Posted: 2 April, 2012 Filed under: About AfricLaw | Tags: Africa, Centre for Human Rights, debate, Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa (ICLA), law, legal academics Leave a comment
AfricLaw, launched in April 2012, is a blog which provides a platform for discussion for those interested in the rule and role of law in Africa. All areas of law applicable to Africa are covered, both international (global and continental) and national. Legal academics and students, researchers, international and national civil servants, legislators and politicians, legal practitioners and judges, as well as those who are not lawyers but have an interest in law are among those who are welcome to participate in the discussions. AfricLaw provides a space for the discussion of issues of substance, forming of opinions and information sharing among people living on the continent, those from Africa who are in the diaspora, and anyone else who is interested in participating. AfricLaw will also serve as a vehicle for comments from Africa on legal developments in the rest of the world.
The aim of AfricLaw is to contribute towards strengthening African capacity in the field of law, through informed and engaged discussion. As a blog, the strength of the platform will be the immediacy of interaction across a wide geographical area without the need to travel; the aim will not be to take the place but rather to strengthen the role played by initiatives such as academic journals, books, professional organisations etc.
AfricLaw 