Judgment No. CCZ 12/2015 33 Const. Application No. 79/14 Elizabeth Warner in the article referred to earlier at p 251 highlights the shortcomings of the CRC in these terms: “The CRC intended as a comprehensive treaty on the rights of children, contains no explicit provision on marriage, which is odd, if not downright baffling (perhaps the drafters thought the subject was already covered by the Marriages Convention). Article 1 of the CRC provides that ‘a child means every human being below the age of eighteen years, unless under the law applicable to the child majority is attained earlier’. The word ‘majority’ is deliberately not defined in the CRC and is left to local law to determine. Consider how problematic this provision is in the case of a married female child. In a society where a woman’s value is defined entirely by reference to her marital status and her ability to bear children, a married female is likely to be viewed as having attained adult, or ‘majority’ status regardless of her age, all the more so once she has borne a child of her own. One could therefore argue that the entire CRC becomes irrelevant to her at that point. And indeed, many domestic laws explicitly provide that a person attains majority upon marriage regardless of her age, thus creating an exception to the general ‘rule of 18’ that eviscerates the CRC mandate where it is most needed.” The CRC has also been criticised for not applying to girls and boys equally in that it does not give due consideration to particularly harmful situations that may be specific to either girls or boys. Askari, Ladan in an article titled “The Convention on the Rights of the Child; The Necessity of Adding a Provision to Ban Child Marriages” (1998) 5 ILSA Journal of International and Comparative Law 123 explains that although the CRC was “designed to be gender blind” violations that primarily affect boys (i.e. child soldiers) are covered under CRC Article 38. The same consideration is not given to violations predominantly affecting girls in child marriage. Askari points out that although the issue of child soldiers may at times impact upon the girl-child, the primary target of concern is the boy–child. Similarly, even though the issue of child marriage is of greater concern for girls it could also apply to boys. But the failure