Africa
Meetings held in 2009 with the African Union Commissioner for Social Affairs and the Chairperson of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child initiated institutional collaboration, including mapping positive initiatives across the region, supporting legislative reforms and consolidating national information and data systems on violence against children. This collaborative framework was further strengthened in 2010 by the thematic debate on violence against children, held by the African Committee with the association of the Special Representative. At the meeting, an agreement was reached on a strategic follow-up through enhanced advocacy to protect children from violence and promote positive alternatives to violent discipline; support for legislative and policy reforms to ban all forms of violence; the development of an African report on this issue; and the inclusion of the protection of children from all forms of violence in the agenda of a future summit of African Heads of State and Government.
Strategic Developments
The 15th Meeting of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) was held at the AU Conference Centre, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 15 to 19 March 2010. Its main objective was to share experiences on the promotion of child rights in Africa, consider State Party Reports and agree on recommendations for more effective action to improve the welfare of children.
Other articles concerning this region:
We, the representatives of the Council of Europe, the League of Arab States, MERCOSUR Pro-Tempore Chairmanship of the Permanent Commission of the Initiative Nin@Sur, the South Asia Initiative to End Violence Against Children (SAIEVAC), and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child participating, with UNICEF, in the first held meeting of Regional Organizations and Institutions on Violence against Children,...
The Guidelines for Action are a framework to achieve:
(a) Full implementation of AU and related international instruments such as are outlined in the Preamble bove;
(b) Practical guidance to African governments to assist them meet their treaty obligations at both regional and international level;
(c) An instrument to guide law reform and harmonisation efforts amongst States
(d) A tool for the co-ordination and...
On 7-8 November 2011 at Munyonyo, in Kampala, Uganda, representatives of governments, CSOs, INGOs, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the African Union, UN agencies, UN experts and other experts, from all over Africa and other parts of the world, met to discuss about deprivation of liberty as a last resort and of...
African Union Social Affairs Commission
African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child
Every year an estimate of 10 million girls are married before they reach 18. In the most appalling of these cases, little girls as young as eight years old are being married off to men who may be three or four times their age.
Girls who are forced to marry face a life of violence in the home where they are physically and sexually abused, suffer from inhuman and degrading treatment and ultimately slavery.
Today, on the first...