social workers and submits the report to the child court. If the child has a family, the court will call upon the parents and assess the reason and try to sort out the problem. If the court believes that the family is not the best environment, children will be transferred to the care facilities. The social workers do the inspection periodically and this regulation creates accountability. c. AU campaign on ending child marriage Mrs Dikéré Marie-Christine BOCOUM, the AU Special Rapporteur on Ending Child Marriages presented on the campaign and prevailing issues for the attention of the State Parties and other participants. Mrs BOCOUM started by highlighting that Article 21 of the African Children’s Charter prohibits child marriage and that Article 2 defines children as those below the age of 18. Accordingly she mentioned that the age of marriage is 18 and the African Children’s Charter makes it compulsory to register every marriage. The Special Rapporteur explained why Africa needed a special measure to tackle the child marriage problem by making reference to the fact that out of the 41 countries affected by child marriage globally, 30 are in Africa, and out of the 28 girls who get married each minute17 of them live in Africa. She stressed that if no progress is made, 950 million girls will be in early marriages in 2050 as per UNICEF estimates. In her presentation Mrs BOCOUM indicated that the effects of early marriages include poor physiological development which does not allow them to hold the responsibility of marriage, early child pregnancy which leads to death of mothers, transmission of HIV, and social consequences caused by dropout from school that leads to low education rates with adverse effects on social development. Given these effects, the AU reacted in 2014 to this phenomenon even if Agenda 2063 has some indications. Africa has launched a campaign to end child marriage which makes African the first to launch a campaign like this. It was informed that to date the campaign has been launched in 20 countries. Mrs BOCOUM mentioned that the campaign looks at legislative reform, strict penalties of perpetrators, national strategies to eradicate child marriage, establishment of monitoring and evaluation frameworks, effective involvement of all actors, and finally reducing rate of child marriage It was also indicated that within the Structure of the AU a Goodwill Ambassador and a Special Rapporteur have been appointed. Mrs BOCOUM presented that the mandate of the Special Rapporteur is to establish normative framework, undertake evaluation, fact finding and monitoring missions, collect best practices, and undertake dialogue with all stakeholders like children, CSOs, states, community leaders. Another initiative of the AU mentioned in the presentation is the adoption of a declaration to end child marriage in 2015. 23 | P a g e