See the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989, especially article 6, which grants 'life, survival and development of every child' , as well as Article 24(3), demanding that State Parties 'take all effective and appropriate measures with a view to abolishing traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children' (UN Committee on the Rights of the Child 2013).
case studies examine how state law is implemented locally, partly accepted, combined with local and/or religious law, or rejected. They also look at how state officials make use of local institutions, norms and actors in order to 'make things work' and apply state law in their daily practice. While friction, contradictions and clashes are not denied, a closer look is taken at the potential of legal pluralism, in the hope of identifying how the existing and inevitably plural legal setting can become a win-win situation for all. 2 The Convention is very clear about its aims to eradicate all practices discriminating against women, even if that means changing cultural values, and even if women belonging to a specific culture do not perceive them as harmful (see www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw). 3 Anthropologists were long aware of but only marginally involved in the debate on how 'global law can be translated into the vernacular' (Merry 2006:2). It was only after the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s that anthropology engaged actively in research and debates around International Human Rights (Goodale 2009:2). The 'Declaration on Anthropology and Human Rights' , voted on and approved by the general membership of the American Anthropologists Association (AAA) in 1999, clearly expressed the 'commitment to human rights consistent with international principles' and declared it mandatory for anthropologists 'to be involved in the debate on enlarging our understanding of human rights on the basis of anthropological knowledge and research' (Goodale 2009:7). 4 Conversely, in anthropology it has long been agreed that culture is something fluid, contested, dynamic, and fundamentally hybrid.
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