Federalism and the Challenge of Applying International Human Rights Law Against Child Marriage in Africa

Abstract

Federalism presents a dilemma for the implementation of international human rights law in those African states that operate federal constitutions. Central governments in these states enjoy international legal personality, make treaties and represent their states as parties to those treaties, yet internal legislative competence over some issues regulated by treaty is commonly shared between central and regional governments. Consequently, while central governments bear responsibility for transforming international standards into national law, challenges arise in areas such as the protection of children from child marriage, where they lack exclusive national legislative competence. How have these states managed to implement international law without violating their own constitutions? Applying a comparative approach, this article argues that African federal states have employed two main models to overcome the dilemma, neither of which has been totally effective. Drawing lessons from federal states outside Africa, the article suggests other mechanisms to perfect Africa's two main models.

Child's Rights and the Challenges of Educating the Girl-Child: Assessing the Contributions of UNICEF in Nigeria

“…Both the National and State Assemblies are empowered to legislate on items in the concurrent list. However, if there is an inconsistency between the law made by the state and federal governments on an item in the concurrent list, the law made by the federal government is considered superior (Egede, 2007;Ebobrah and Eboibi, 2017). In addition, matters that are neither in the exclusive nor concurrent lists are regarded as residual and, therefore, squarely within the exclusive legislative competence of the Houses of Assembly of the States (Egede, 2007:271).…”

“…Thus, many of these works examined child's rights in Nigeria vis-à-vis global expectations on child's rights or from the perspectives of child's rights as a component of human rights and the attendant limitations in their actualization in the country (Egede, 2007;Ibraheem, 2015;Nzarga, 2016;AjaNwachuku, 2017;Ogunniyi, 2018;Ajanwachuku and Faga, 2018;Akinola, 2019). Other strands of scholarship focused either exclusively on girl-child education or in relation to sociocultural and religious impediments to its actualization, while also dissecting the diverse nature, manifestations and implications of girl-child education to Nigeria's national development (Eweniyi and Usman, 2013;Oluyemi and Yinusa, 2016;Ebobrah and Eboibi, 2017;Offor et al, 2021). None of the works that constitute the extant literature on child's rights and girl-child education in Nigeria provided insights on how UNICEF's interventionist programs have impacted, one way or another, the girl-child education within the broad context of Child's Rights Act, hence this study.…”