138 Mezmur/18th birthday of the African Children’s Rights Charter be undertaken below the age of 18 remain in some jurisdictions.66 To assist in addressing these efforts, the African Children’s Committee, together with the African Commission, is finalising a Joint General Comment on ending child marriage in Africa. On the basis of the Charter provisions, two significant initiatives of the African Union that are relevant in the context of child marriages have been launched and rely heavily on the relevant provisions of the African Children’s Rights Charter. The first one is the African Union Campaign on Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Africa. The second one is the AU Campaign on Ending Child Marriage in Africa. It is also critical to highlight, the extent to which article 21 of the Charter is proving instrumental in court decisions on the African continent. In 2015, in Mudzuru & Another v The Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs & 2 Others, the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe found child marriage to be a violation of the Zimbabwe Constitution of 2013.67 The Zimbabwean Constitutional Court relied heavily on article 21(2) of the African Children’s Rights Charter in declaring that it has ‘direct effect’, and that section 22 of the Marriages Act,68 which allows for child marriage is unconstitutional.69 The High Court of Tanzania also issued a judgment on a similar case, where it declared that sections 13 and 17 of the Law of Marriage Act70 are discriminatory for giving preferential treatment regarding the eligible ages of marriage between girls and boys (which provides for the possibility of girls to marry at the age of 14 with the consent of the court, and at the age of 15 with the consent of their parents) and that they have lost their usefulness and deserve to be declared null and void.71 66 Examples include cases in which guardians, a minister, a heads of state/government have the legal authority to consent to marriage of children especially girls in accordance with customary or statutory law. See for instance Guinean Children Code (2008) (Loi L/ 2008/011/AN) article 268; Kenya, The Hindu Marriage and Divorce Act Chapter 157, Revised edition 2008 (1984) article 3(1); and Madagascar, Family Code Law No 2007022, 20 (2007) article 3. 67 For a review of the case, see J Sloth-Nielsen and K Hove ‘Mudzuru & Another v The Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs & 2 Others: a review’ (2015) 15 African Human Rights Law Journal 554. 68 Chapter 5:11. 69 Sloth-Nielsen and Hove (n 67 above) 561. 70 Cap 29 R.E. 2002. 71 See Girls Not Brides ‘High Court judgement in Tanzania rules age of marriage laws discriminatory and unconstitutional’ (13 July 2016) available at https:// www.girlsnotbrides.org/high-court-tanzania-child-marriage/; Human Rights Watch ‘Tanzania needs to renew commitment to ending child marriage’ (11 October 2016) https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/10/11/tanzania-needs-renew-commitment-endingchild-marriage.