Abstract:
It is an undeniable fact that children in Africa face many
challenges in their sexual health and development trajectories. One
of the challenges that children face is ideological, that is, the social
construction of childhood sexuality and the effects of that construction
on law and policy and on what information and services children may
access regarding sex and sexuality. Adults tend to represent children as
sexually innocent and incompetent, and their actions toward children
focus on preserving this sexual innocence and averting sexual risks. The article discusses how this ideological positioning of children shapes
sexuality education, and the criminalisation of sexual conduct between
consenting adolescents. Legal instruments and related interpretive
instruments such as court judgments and the General Comments and
Recommendations of treaty-monitoring bodies play an important role
as they construct meanings of childhood sexuality that align with or
contradict dominant representations of childhood as sexual innocence
which has effects for children’s sexual rights. The article analyses how
General Comments of the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the
African Committee of Experts have represented childhood sexuality. It
argues for the transformation of views about children toward perceiving
children as having sexual agency to the extent of their evolving
capacities, as a prerequisite to addressing challenges that children face
in Africa relating to sexuality. It recommends that the African Committee
of Experts should, in its interpretation of the African Children’s Charter,
construct childhood sexuality positively to represent children as sexual
agents rather than positioning them as sexually innocent which also
implies viewing any sexual activity of the child as inherently harmful or
as a mark of deviance or corruption.