Revisiting equality as a right: the minimum age of marriage clause in the Nigerian Child Rights Act, 2003

Abstract

This article takes the Minimum Age of Marriage clause of the Nigerian Child Rights Act (cra) of 2003 as an entry point through which to analyse the politics of women's rights in Nigeria. It explores some of the challenges of domesticating international human rights conventions in a context where plural legal systems and entrenched cultural norms complicate attempts to redress gender inequalities. It reviews the introduction of this legislation, the reaction of different stakeholders to it and the ways in which different women's groups and programmes have engaged with the emerging controversy over the age of marriage. Ultimately the lesson that emerges from this case is that, for international human rights treaties to make a difference for vulnerable groups such as children, they have to go beyond being evoked and advocated by groups to become tools for political action, which also means the creation of mechanisms that challenge powerful agents in society and compel accountability.

Notes

1 unicef/Federal Government of Nigeria, Children's and Women's Rights in Nigeria: A Wake-up Call—A Situation Assessment and Analysis, 2001. This analysis is in keeping with the historical context of gender inequality across all sections of the Nigerian population.

2 A Iman, Northern Nigeria Women's Reproductive and Sexual Rights and the Offence of Zina in Muslim Laws in Nigeria, 2006, at www.pambazuka.org.

3 unicef, quoted in Integrated Regional Information Networks (irin), Nigeria: Focus on the Challenge of Enforcing Children's Rights, November 2002, at http://www.irinnews.org/.

4 SL Sanusi, ‘Discourses, subjectivities and family law in Nigeria’, paper presented at the International Conference on Muslim Family Law in sub-Saharan Africa, Centre for Contemporary Islam, University of Cape Town, 11 – 14 March 2002, argues that the radical departure in the implementation of shar'ia in parts of northern Nigeria is the latest manifestation of the neo-fundamentalist project. The project has an overt political religious agenda of a ‘return to Islam’.

5 Reported in This Day newspaper as ‘Nigeria: Shar'ia Council against Child Rights Act’, 21 August 2005.

6 Ideals of the indivisibility and universality of rights.

7 Report of a two-day workshop on Child's Rights Act Advocacy and the Nigeria Movement for Children organised by the Akwa Ibom State Social Mobilization and Technical Committee, at http://www.akwaibomstategov.com/edit2-2.asp?ID = 1106.

8 irin, 26 August 2002. Also in F:\ecoi_net - Focus countries » Nigeria » Current Issues (Shar'ia).txt.

9 omct – cleen Foundation, ‘Report on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by Nigeria’, prepared for the Committee on the Rights of the Child, 38th Session, Geneva, January 2005.

10 Iman, Northern Nigeria Women's Reproductive and Sexual Rights.

11 omct – cleen Foundation, ‘Report on the implementation of the Convention’.

12 The rights guaranteed include the right to life (Sec 33); the right to personal liberty (Sec 35); the right to a fair hearing (Sec 36) and the right to freedom of movement (Sec 41). Section 42 prohibits unjustifiable discrimination on the basis of ‘ethnic group, place of origin, sex, religion or political opinion’.

13 Press release of the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women following its 637th and 638th meetings.

14 There is a lot of justification for this law but its attempt to keep girls in school for as long as possible subtly supports the views expressed. There is wide gender disparity in Nigeria's literacy rate, with the undp Human Development Report reporting literacy rates of 62.5% for men and 37.5% for women. J Suara, ‘Gendered minorities in Nigeria: a review of the educational status of women’, in M Abba & M Kanu (eds), Education of the Disadvantaged Groups in Nigeria: Challenges for Universal Basic Education, Conference Proceedings, Yola, 2000, p 25.

15 B Yusuf, ‘Women and empowerment in Islam’, Weekly Trust, 13 December 2002.

16 Pereira is the National Co-ordinator of the Network for Women's Studies in Nigeria. C Pereira, ‘Zina and transgressive heterosexuality in northern Nigeria’, Feminist Africa, Sexual Culture, 5, 2005, at http://www.pambazuka.org.

17 Iman, Northern Nigeria Women's Reproductive and Sexual Rights.

18 omct – cleen Foundation, ‘Report on the implementation of the convention’.

19 Some states, particularly in the southern parts of the country, have gone ahead with integrating the cra into their state laws but, with the obstacles listed, their application is nominal and therefore unable to make a significant impact on the other parts of the country.

20 Weekly Trust, 10 – 16 September 2005.

21 Ibid.

22 Letter circulated by Baobab for Women's Rights, an ngo, calling for caution by international rights groups and sympathisers campaigning against a sentence of death by stoning on a woman found to have committed adultery by a shar'ia court in northern Nigeria.

23 Centre for Islamic Legal Studies, Ahmadu Bello University and dfid, ‘Nigeria's security, justice and growth programme: promoting women's rights through Shar'ia in northern Nigeria’, mimeo, 2005.