Indigenous Legal Principles and Child Rights

Abstract

Ghana, like many African states, operates traditional justice systems and practices that complement and contrast with formal justice practices, thereby creating plural legal systems. These indigenous justice systems are resilient, influential, and regularly used especially at the grassroots level and some poor inner cities. These attributes make them major players within children's justice systems in Africa, including when it comes to responding to serious offences by children. As a consequence, how can we leverage these indigenous justice practices to maximize the chances of African states realizing the aims and aspirations of the CRC? This is what this chapter seeks to explore using Ghana as a case study. The paper draws on group discussions and in-depth interviews with people from nine ethnic groups in Ghana vested in their indigenous legal systems. Informed by historical and theoretical perspectives on colonialism and legal pluralism, this chapter relies on empirical findings of local practices, and concludes that the plural legal systems in all its diversity in Ghana, including the various indigenous justice systems, offer unique opportunities to realize child-friendly justice responses to serious offending that resonate with the spirit and letter of the CRC.