INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LAW AND THE FAMILY

This article identifies the specific issues which affect African women in the sphere of marriage and the family relations within the framework of Articles 15 and 16 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The article first elaborates and puts in context concepts such as family, marriage, rights, equality and jusutice and then provies an overview of the plurality of laws which have emanated mainly from colonialism.

The author argues that traditional African thinking has found its way into the African Charter of Human and Peoples' Rights 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: traditional values may be a sharp contrast with the more "modern" rights granted by the Charter.