Twenty-five Years of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child

The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child is a unique regional instrument for the protection of children's rights which was established in 1990 by the then Organization of African Unity. It provides for the establishment of a dedicated monitoring body to oversee the implementation of its provisions in the African context, namely the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC). This volume draws together a group of leading, mostly African, scholars to assess the achievements and effectiveness of the Charter, the Committee and the children's rights. The book is both backward and forward looking, a reflection on successes and achievements of the past, as well as setting an agenda for the future. The authors adopt a socio-legal approach, so ensuring that the book will be of value to disciplines outside of the legal field. This work provides an invaluable resource for researchers, academics and practitioners with an interest in children's rights, and African development.

Julia Sloth-Nielsen is a longstanding scholar of the development of children’s rights in African context and current second vice chair of the Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. She is Professor of Law at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. She also holds a chair in Children’s Rights in the Developing World at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. She has published extensively in South Africa and internationally and has served on the editorial board of the International Journal on Children's Rights since 1996. She has an impressive record of publishing on the Committee and the Charter, and also produced the induction manual which has been used to induct new committee members upon election.