Judgment No. CCZ 12/2015 36 Const. Application No. 79/14 to be 18 years and make registration of all marriages in an official registry compulsory.” In clear and unambiguous language, Article 21 of the ACRWC imposed on States Parties, including Zimbabwe, an obligation which they voluntarily undertook, to take all appropriate measures to eliminate harmful social and cultural practices affecting the welfare, dignity, normal growth and development of the child. The Charter goes on to specifically target child marriage as such a harmful social and cultural practice affecting the welfare, dignity, normal growth and development of the child particularly the girl–child. The States Parties are placed under a positive obligation to take effective measures, including legislation, to specify the age of eighteen years as the minimum age for marriage. They are obliged to abolish child marriage. Article 21(2) of the ACRWC avoided the omissions and exceptions that the other conventions on human rights relating to marriage had permitted States Parties to exploit through local laws that authorised child marriage. Commenting on the provisions of Article 21(2) of the ACRWC, Elizabeth Warner in the article already referred to had this to say at p 257: “This is the most explicit provision of any of the international treaties discussed herein. It unequivocally sets the minimum age of marriage at eighteen and brooks no exception for local religious or other cultural practices, nor does it allow for exceptions based upon the consent of a local authority or the parents or guardians of the children concerned. An Oxfam report optimistically states that this law is a reflection of changes in attitudes toward child marriages in recent years. The only drawback to this convention is that there are not more States that are parties to it. Again one longs for the ability to insert this provision into the CRC and the Marriages Convention where it so clearly belongs.”