INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE FAMILY: AFRICAN VARIATIONS ON A COMMON THEME.

The article discusses the generally low priority accorded human rights in Africa, and suggests that this is largely due to the ease with which critics of the human rights movement are able to characterize it as foreign and irrelevant to the continent. Arguing that in the African Charter of Human and Peoples' Rights Africa now has a document whose origins cannot be dismissed as alien, and whose philosophy is more ideologically and culturally relevant to it, some potential areas of conflict in its application are nevertheless identified. The main thesis is that there appears to be an inevitable tension between African thinking on human rights in general, and some of the specific provisions of the African Charter. The author argues that African thinking has found its way into the Charter via clauses insisting that reflections on the document should be animated by 'traditional African values', and that this sets the stage for conflict in the area of family law since traditional values may be at sharp variance with the more 'modern' rights granted by the Charter. In particular, it is suggested that in Africa problems of marriage and the family cannot be dissociated from issues of women's rights and that protection for the latter is greatly reduced under a Charter dedicated to uphold traditional values. The article concludes with some proposals for resolving this apparent conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Law & the Family is the property of Oxford University Press / USA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)