This Guide is intended to be a comprehensive resource for finding out more about the Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. It provides practical information for organisations wishing to engage with the Committee but also relevant background information to ensure that this engagement is put into context. As such it is designed to be used by organisations who already use and know the Charter but want specific information about how to engage with the Committee by, for example, finding out about the procedure for submitting a communication; it can also be used by organisations new to the Charter and the Committee who are interested in reading about its history and background.
The Guide is split into six Parts:
• Part One is an introduction to the Guide.
• Part Two gives an overview of the history and content of the ACRWC and looks at how it relates to the CRC. It also considers the Committee’s mandate, its members and its achievements so far.
• Part Three is the most practical section and examines how civil society can access and use the Committee to advance children’s rights in Africa.
• Part Four looks at how the Committee fits into the structures of the African Union (AU).
• Part Five provides sources of further information.
• Part Six consists of nine annexes including a ratification table for the Children’s Charter, biographies of current Committee members, the full text of the Charter and six of the Committee’s working documents.
This publication includes an overview of key right to education decisions made by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, and the UN Human Rights Committee. They are judgments that have taken place in these courts from 1988 to 2014 and deal with the fulfilment of the right to education for various groups, such as people with disabilities, migrants, persons deprived of liberty and Indigenous Peoples.
The Summaries of Jurisprudence series has been published since 2010. This recent publication is available for download via the following websites (in both Spanish and English):
CEJIL: http://cejil.org/publicaciones/sumarios-de-jurisprudencia-derecho-a-la-educacion
CLADE: http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/v2/en/publications/clade/studies.html
This training manual explores the origins of the African regional human rights mechanisms. It elaborates the normative framework and rights recognised in the regional human rights treaties in the region. It also focuses on how to use these monitoring and enforcement mechanisms and some of the challenges faced in doing so. This is a learning tool for human rights defenders, and especially trainers from the region interested in conducting training on human rights. With a focus also on civil society engagement in the regional human rights mechanisms, the publication provides useful insights at a practical level. The publication will enhance your knowledge on African regional human rights mechanisms.
The joint general comment elaborates on the nature of State Party obligations that arise from Article 6 (b) of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol) and Article 21 (2) the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. It expounds upon the underlying principles of interpretation that serve as a lens through which the relevant provisions of the aforementioned instruments should be understood. It further describes legislative, institutional and other measures that should be taken by States Parties to give effect to the prohibition of child marriage and to protect the rights of those at risk or affected by child marriage.
The scope of the general comment covers children in child marriages, children at risk of child marriage and women who were married before the age of 18. The document gives guidance to governments, csos, igos, child protection clusters, practitioners, individuals and groups in any effort towards the elimination of child marriage and protection of children in this context.
The joint comments includes a section (IV) on state obligations which stipulates that states must adopt institutional measures around education. In particular, it requests states parties to "put in place measures to retain all children but especially girls in school and to raise awareness about the importance of their education." Policies states must adopt include measures to encourage pregnant girls to keep attending or returning to school.
It has recently been suggested that the age of human rights is over. The West, itself often not respecting human rights, is said to have abused the concept as a tool to retain control over the developing world. Human rights have remained a foreign construct in Africa, the Near East, and Asia. They have "underperformed," and the level of privation in many parts of the world is more intense than ever. This Article acknowledges elements of truth in these observations, but argues that the battle for human rights is not lost. Using the right to education in Africa as an example, three arguments will be presented to explain how human rights can regain their moral cogency and actually help change a world of misery for the better. First, human rights need to be "domesticized," made "home-grown" achievements with which local populations can identify. Regional human rights institutions need to give specificity to universal norms. These "locally-owned" norms must then be effectively enforced. Second, pure "development goal" approaches to reducing global poverty need to be debunked. Instead, a human rights approach needs to identify clear duty-bearers, including notably the World Bank, who, when they have failed to comply with specified duties, should be considered "human rights violators" and held accountable accordingly. Third, and perhaps most importantly, human rights must be recognized to give rise to extraterritorial state obligations. These are obligations of states, in appropriate circumstances, to respect, protect, and fulfill the human rights of those beyond their own territory. The extraterritorial human rights obligations of states must structure bilateral development assistance and cooperation, the lending operations of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and free trade within and beyond the World Trade Organization (here, meaning the General Agreement on Trade in Services and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights).
The Kampala Convention is the first international treaty, adopted at regional level (Africa), that protect internally displaced persons. It binds governments to provide legal protection for the rights and well-being of those forced to flee inside their home countries due to conflict, violence, natural disasters, and other human rights abuses. Article 9.2 (b) refers to education.
The Action plan of the Djibouti Declaration for Refugee Education of the IGAD outlines the actions to be carried out in the delivery of quality education and learning outcomes for refugees, returnees and host communities in the region.