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Publication is the heart and soul of scholarly research. This section highlights work that members of the UWC Faculty of Law are publishing in the children's rights niche. Many the publications are in peer-reviewed journals or chapters in edited volumes; others are books, project reports or media articles. All reflect the breadth and depth of our social and intellectual engagement.
We share this growing collection of publication links, abstracts, excerpts and, where possible, full-text documents, for the benefit of scholars, researchers, jurists, practitioners, students, activists, policy-makers and -shapers, and the general public.
Featured publication/s
Edited and co-edited works
Mwambene, Lea, with Lawson, D and Dubin, A (eds) (2020). Gender, Poverty and Access to Justice Policy Implementation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Routledge.
'Access to justice is a fundamental right guaranteed under a wide body of international, regional and domestic law. It is also an essential component of development policies which seek to adequately respond to the multidimensional deprivations faced by the poor in order to improve socio-economic well-being and advance the progress of the Sustainable Development Goals. Women and children make up most of Africa’s poorest and most marginalized population, and as such are often prevented from enforcing rights or seeking other recourse.
'This book explores and analyzes the issue of gendered access to justice, poverty and disempowerment across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and provides policy discussions on the integration of gender in justice programming. Through individual country case studies, the book focuses on the challenges, obstacles and successes of developing and implementing gender focused access to justice policies and programming in the region.
'This multidisciplinary volume will be of interest to policy makers as well as scholars and researchers focusing on poverty and gender policy across law, economics and global development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, the volume provides policy discussion applicable in other geographical areas where access to justice is elusive for the poor and marginalized.' (Description reproduced from publisher's website.)
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A butterfly that thinks itself a bird: The identity of customary courts in Nigeria
Access to justice, gender and customary law in Malawi
Children and informal justice systems in Africa
Children's rights jurisprudence in South Africa: A 20 year retrospective
Children’s rights standards and child marriage in Malawi?
Curriculum decolonisation and revisionist pedagogy of African customary law
Engendering access to justice for the poorest and most vulnerable in sub-Saharan Africa
Gender, poverty and access to justice policy implementation in sub-Saharan Africa
Gendered justice policies on realizing the most vulnerable and extreme poor in sub-Saharan Africa
KOS v Minister of Home Affairs (2017) and its relevance to the law of marriage in South Africa
Legal pluralism and social change: Insights from matrimonial property rights in Nigeria
Marital rape and cultural defence in South Africa
Monitoring and implementation of children’s rights
Peacebuilding and the interface of state law and indigenous market laws in Southern Nigeria
Recent developments in child justice (2016-2018)
Recent legal responses to child marriage in southern Africa
Rethinking customary law and women’s property rights
Rethinking the interface between customary law and constitutionalism in sub-Saharan Africa
Southern African perspectives on banning corporal punishment
Surrogacy in South Africa in Eastern and Western perspectives on surrogacy
The African children’s rights system
The essence vindicated? Courts and customary marriages in South Africa
The rights of minor siblings in migration
The role of customary law in the shaping of new models of pluralistic states
The role of social workers in South Africa’s child justice system
The thin edge of the wedge: Ukuthwala, alienation and consent