Child marriage, human rights and international norms: the case of legislative reform in Trinidad and Tobago

Abstract

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child entered into force in 1990. It condemns child marriage, violence and discrimination against children and enjoins tutelage for their education and health. Implementing such principles in national legislation sometimes conflicts with local norms relating to respect for cultural and religious traditions. This was the case of Trinidad and Tobago, a multicultural and multi-religious society that legally sanctioned child marriage until 2017. The paper makes two unique contributions to the literature. First, using the literature on child marriage and the obligations under international conventions, the paper creates a child marriage conceptual framework with the main normative positions on child marriage. Second, using the framework, it explores the normative motivations underlying the domestic legal reform debates held in parliament between 2015–2017. The paper uses the conceptual framework to explain the transformations in the traditional positions of local religious and ethnic groups, provides evidence of norm penetration from the international to a local multicultural setting and furthers the literature on international human rights norm penetration and contestation.

Keywords:

• child marriage
• human rights
• Trinidad and Tobago
• international law
• constructivism
• norms

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michelle Scobie

Michelle Scobie is a Lecturer and Researcher at the Institute of International Relations at The University of the West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine, and Co-Editor of the Caribbean Journal of International Relations and Diplomacy. She has practiced as an Attorney-at-Law in Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela. She was the first corporate secretary of the Trinidad and Tobago Heritage and Stabilisation Fund. She is a member of the Caribbean Studies Association, the International Studies Association, the University of the West Indies Oceans Governance Network, the Earth System Governance Global Research Alliance and the Future Earth Ocean Knowledge Action Network. Her research areas include international law, international environmental law and developing states’ perspectives on global and regional environmental governance. Her most recent book is Global Environmental Governance and Small States: Architectures and Agency in the Caribbean (Edward Elgar, 2019).

Afiya France

Afiya France graduated as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar upon obtaining her LLM (with a concentration in health law) from Columbia Law School, New York. She was admitted to practice as an Attorney-at Law in Trinidad and Tobago in October 2004. She received her LLM from Columbia Law. Before joining the Law Faculty in 2012, she practised law at the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs Solicitor General’s Department. At the faculty, she teaches family law, alternative dispute resolution and discrimination in employment. Her research interests include disability law, discrimination law and human rights. Her most recent publication is “The CRPD and Persons with Mental Disabilities in the Commonwealth Caribbean” in the Journal of Law Governance and Society (2017).