[38] In line with obligations around birth registration, girls who deliver babies
must be assisted to register a birth after delivery.30
Institutional measures to promote access to justice
[39] Systematic inadequacies in the administration of justice, such as lack of
infrastructure, resources, adequate laws, well-trained personnel and corruption
violate States Parties obligations to ensure access to justice and impacts on the
obligation of States Parties to protect girls from child marriage. Ensuring access
to justice may require States Parties to conduct awareness raising activities about
laws on child marriage and how people can enforce them. Toll free helplines are
encouraged as an effective means of facilitating access to justice for vulnerable
and remote groups. Where needed, free legal aid should be provided.
[40] States Parties should further consider establishing specialised women’s and
children’s police units, programmes aimed at training prosecutors, magistrates and
judges in gender and age sensitive approaches and interventions for supporting
Civil Society Organisations, national human rights institutions and statutory
bodies to ensure access to effective assistance in justice processes.
[41] States Parties must provide for appropriate remedies where rights or freedoms
have been violated.31 Appropriate remedies means, among other things, that
30
Article 6 of the African Children’s Charter and see also General Comment Number 2 of the African Commission available at http://www.achpr.org/instruments/general-comment-two-rights-women/ (accessed 18 march 2016).
31
Article 25 of the Maputo Protocol. In order for a remedy to meet these objectives and meet
the standards required by international law, laws should accomplish at least three outcomes. First,
laws shouldvest competence in an appropriate adjudicative mechanism to provide relief. In the context of child marriage, relief might include an injunction to prevent a child marriage, a declaration
noting the invalidity of a child marriage, an order requiring that services be provided to a victim or
compensation. Secondly, laws should give adjudicative authorities discretion to impose remedial
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