Human Rights and the Rights of the Child

What you need to know

• Human rights are universal, inalienable, indivisible and interdependent. They belong to everyone regardless of tribe, religion or status, cannot be transferred or surrendered, and cannot be ranked one above another.
• Chapter IV of the 1999 Constitution runs from section 33 to section 46. In order: right to life, right to dignity of the human person, right to personal liberty, right to fair hearing, right to private and family life, freedom of thought conscience and religion, freedom of expression and the press, right to peaceful assembly and association, right to freedom of movement, freedom from discrimination, and the right to acquire and own immovable property anywhere in Nigeria.
• Section 44 protects a person from having property compulsorily taken without prompt payment of adequate compensation and a right of access to court. Section 45 sets the limits, and section 46 gives the High Court special jurisdiction to hear a citizen who says his rights have been breached.
• Rights are not absolute. Section 45 allows laws that restrict them in the interest of defence, public safety, public order, public morality, public health, or to protect the rights and freedoms of other persons. That is why a curfew, a quarantine order or a ban on a noisy procession can stand.
• During a declared state of emergency further derogation is permitted, but the Constitution does not allow the right to life to be set aside except for deaths resulting from acts of war, and it does not permit a person to be punished under a law that did not exist when the act was done.
• Classification you should be able to reel off: civil and political rights such as life, liberty and voting; economic, social and cultural rights such as work, education and health; and collective or solidarity rights such as the right to development, to a clean environment and to self-determination.
• Internationally the foundation is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948, which is why that date is Human Rights Day. Africa adds the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, adopted in 1981 at Banjul and domesticated in Nigeria by an Act of the National Assembly, which is unusual because it gives the Charter force in Nigerian courts.
• The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted in 1989 and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child in 1990. Nigeria gave domestic effect to them through the Child's Rights Act of 2003.
• The Child's Rights Act 2003 defines a child as any person under the age of eighteen. It sets the minimum age of marriage at eighteen, prohibits child betrothal, outlaws the use of children in criminal activity and in hazardous labour, forbids tattooing and skin marking of children, and makes the best interest of the child the paramount consideration in every decision.
• Because child welfare is on the residual list, the federal Act binds the Federal Capital Territory, and each state must pass its own version for it to apply there. Most states have now done so, but domestication was slow and uneven, especially in parts of the north, which is why child marriage prosecutions differ from state to state.
• Children's rights group into four: survival rights such as life, food, shelter and health care; development rights such as education, play and leisure; protection rights against abuse, neglect, trafficking and exploitation; and participation rights, including the right to be heard in matters affecting the child.
• Children also carry duties. The law expects a child to work towards the cohesion of the family, to respect parents, superiors and elders, to place his abilities at the service of the nation and to preserve Nigerian cultural values.
• Enforcement bodies in Nigeria are the courts under the Fundamental Rights Enforcement Procedure Rules, the National Human Rights Commission established in 1995, the Legal Aid Council for citizens who cannot afford a lawyer, the Public Complaints Commission acting as ombudsman against administrative injustice, and NAPTIP for trafficking of women and children.
• Threats to human rights in Nigeria that WAEC expects you to name concretely are unlawful arrest and detention beyond the constitutional time limit, extrajudicial killing, torture to extract confessions, jungle justice, child labour and street hawking, almajiri destitution, female genital mutilation, forced and early marriage, and suppression of peaceful protest.