Polygamy and Human Rights Conundrum: Clash of Modern and Traditional Values and Call for Review of international Human Rights Attitude

Polygamy, a practice of marrying more than one wife at the same time, a social construct among traditional societies under customary law has been profiled for prohibition and criminalization under international human rights jurisprudence for been a violation of human rights of equality and non-discrimination of women and their children projecting monogamy as an ideal marriage. This position differed from the African human rights jurisprudence thereby setting the stage for another clash of Modern and Traditional values in the human rights debacle. Using theoretical and doctrinal data from primary and secondary sources, this study interrogated the contextual and substantial framework of international bill of rights and located justifications for international attitude, the influence of Western ideology that guided the adopted position in juxtaposition with justifications for polygamous practice as well as the human rights of polygamists implicit in rights of privacy, individual autonomy, liberty and matrimony, and the impact of such international position would have on settled polygamous families. This study found out that no form of marriage was expressly mentioned in the international bill of rights as proscribed or ideal but that the idea was Western-oriented based on their morals and civilization; that human rights of polygamists as well as settled customary marriage structure would be negatively impacted. The study concluded that the position of African jurisprudence on polygamy was preferable as the issue of polygamy should be left for jurisdictions under the margin of appreciation and international advocacy should be directed towards strengthening polygamous marriages through legislative actions to
secure the rights of women more effectively and adopt a paradigm shift from proscription and criminalization to acceptability and recognition.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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The datasets used in this study are openly available at [repository link] and the source code is available on GitHub at [GitHub link].

This work did not receive any external funding.