Niger’s Failure to Protect Citizen from Enslavement Condemned by African Regional Court

As reported at IntLawGrrls, the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (the ECOWASCommunity Court of Justice) on Monday, October 27th, condemned member state Niger for its failure to protect its citizen Hadijatou Mani from enslavement.  Hadijatou Mani’s story is incredible, though unfortunately, probably not unusual.  At the age of 12, she was sold, for $500, to a master who exploited not only as a physical laborer but as a sexual slave, selling her into a “marriage” with a friend of his, the very man who had put Hadijatou’s mother into slavery years earlier.  Hadijatou sought to marry a different man, but when she sought legal protection, she was instead convicted of bigamy and sentenced to six months in prison.  

When it ruled in favor of Hadijatou Mani on Monday, the ECOWAS court awarded her 15,000 euros (about $19,000, according to IntLawGrrls).  An attorney for Anti-Slavery International, one of the organizations supporting Mani in her fight, observed that the victory demonstrates “that a women of the most disfavored class can make her rights recognized.  It is also a message addressed, notably, to the countries of this region.”  An important message and one that cannot be repeated often enough, given that, as the same LeMonde article reports, approximately 43,000 of Niger’s 12 million inhabitants, and 18 percent of Mauritania’s population, are enslaved.  

Cross-posted at Feminist Law Professors.

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Love, Loss, and Palimony

Today, Law.com reports on a New Jersey appellate court’s decision in Bayne v. Johnson, which involved a palimony claim by a woman who had been a party in a bizarre triangular relationship for almost twenty years.  According to the article, Fiona Bayne, then a 25-year-old flight attendant with British Airways, began a romance with 41-year-old Earl Johnson in 1981. Earl Johnson was married at that time to Carolyn Johnson, a wealthy 61-year-old woman with a string of six failed marriages.  (Earl had three previous marriages when he married Carolyn.)  The marriage was reportedly one of convenience entered into by Carolyn in 1978 so that her three estranged children would not be able to take control of her financial affairs.  As the beneficiary of a trust valued at $11 million, Carolyn had plenty to lose financially if her children had her declared incompetent and took over control of her money as she feared.  Although the couple reportedly agreed to pursue separate lives, Carolyn supported Earl in a lavish lifestyle through the years.

Bayne, who was living in an apartment in the Bahamas provided by Earl (and paid for with his wife’s money), did not know about Earl’s marriage for the first few years of the relationship.  Once she found out, however, she remained in the relationship.  Bayne, Earl, and Carolyn moved to various locations to pursue Earl’s business ventures with Carolyn bankrolling both the business ventures and the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by the three.  

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