CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS: CENTRAL TO SOLIDARITY, AND THE CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN’S RIGHTS IN AFRICA?
Concluding observations of human rights treaty bodies are often treated as supervisory outputs, yet they function as authoritative interpretive instruments capable of generating normative content. This paper examines selected concluding observations of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) and argues that, when analysed through a normative-doctrinal methodology, they operate as instruments of normative production within African human rights law. It advances the central claim that concluding observations generate solidarity as a legal doctrine that structures the promotion and protection of children’s rights in contexts of structural inequality, governance failure, and social transformation. Drawing on eleven concluding observations, the paper identifies recurring patterns relating to state responsibility, institutional coordination, non-discrimination, socio-economic rights, and the protection of children in situations of vulnerability, and demonstrates how these patterns crystallise into expectations of conduct through iterative interpretive practice. Situating these developments within a global context in which human rights norms are increasingly contested, the paper shows that concluding observations provide a framework for governance grounded in legally constructed solidarity, thereby contributing to the evolution of child-centred rights within the African human rights system.
Keywords: African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, non-discrimination, socio-economic rights, protection of children in situations of vulnerability.
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