3.0 INTERNATIONAL AND REGIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS INSTRUMENTS It is important for Member States, when considering the enactment of national laws on eradicating child marriage to ensure that domestication of international and regional human rights instruments which may impact on the rights of the child and women is done as Member States have already committed to the obligations under these instruments. This is in line with the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1969. This Convention can best be described as a codification of public international law. All SADC MSs are parties to many instruments that are governed by public international law. Article 26 of the Convention states: "Every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith." Article 27 states: "A party may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty." The Model Law effectively lists some of these international instruments for ease of the legislative drafter in the Schedule to the Model Law. The Model Law is based on these international and regional human rights instruments and cites some of these in the preamble and some substantive provisions. The rights of the child cited are a restatement of the rights as provided under some of these international and regional instruments. For the avoidance of doubt, a restatement is to say something in a different way so that it is more clearly or strongly expressed. Therefore, the Model Law gives meaning, content and breath to the rights enumerated in the international human rights instruments by amplifying them and providing for implementation provisions in terms of measures and interventions to be put in place by the governments of Member States. It is important for the legislative drafter to domesticate the listed instruments in accordance with their constitutional requirements and legislative styles and forms. 4.0 STYLE AND FORM The Model Law has been drafted using the precedent set by the SADC Law on HIV/AIDS with minor adjustments for ease of communication in legislation and to facilitate the drafting of national legislation by the Page 6 of 78

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