The concept of ‘stereotypes’ refers to generalisations that are made about the behaviour adopted and/or the characteristics possessed by the members of a particular group. Involving presumptions about human actions and attributes, a stereotype provides ready-made narratives as to how and why some events unfold as they do. Thus, stereotypes, especially when they operate ‘undetected’, hamper an objective analysis of the factual situation. In the courtroom, they tend to have a polluting effect on the assessment of evidence, leading to relevant pieces of evidence being ignored, irrelevant circumstances being given weight, and higher standards of proof being imposed than would have been the case in their absence. This chapter focuses on the approach of the CEDAW Committee in examining the impact of gender stereotypes on the evaluation of evidence performed by domestic courts. It provides an in-depth analysis of the views adopted by the Committee in selected individual communications.

The Introduction sets the scene by outlining the lives of the book’s main protagonists, young women in Calabar, and the types of uncertainty that shape their lives. The discussion builds up an understanding of the complex and opaque social terrain that these young women must deftly navigate as they work towards a future marked by marriage. In urban Nigeria, the belief in the unseen compounds other political, economic, and physical uncertainties that shape everyday life, contributing to an understanding that nothing is ever quite as it seems. The discussion outlines how young women, far from only falling victim to the irregularities of life in Calabar, turn uncertainty into a resource that they can use to manage their reputations and realise their much hoped-for futures. As well as establishing how the book contributes to anthropological and Africanist literature on uncertainty, the Introduction also opens the debate on the time of youth in Africa by focusing on feminine livelihoods and respectability. The Introduction also provides context of fieldwork and research methodology and provides a chapter outline of the rest of the book.

Over time, United Nations human rights treaty bodies (UNTBs) have developed an admissibility requirement that individuals’ allegations be ‘sufficiently substantiated’ or ‘not manifestly unfounded’. Explanations of these terms have varied, but States, treaty body members and scholars have equated them with a prima facie threshold. Among international tribunals, prima facie is commonly understood to require the complainant to make a plausible claim. However, review of UNTB decisions indicates that application of this requirement clashes with the accepted meaning of prima facie by: (1) often requiring the complainant to present convincing allegations; (2) taking into account – or giving greater weight to – the state’s arguments and evidence at the admissibility stage; and 3) sometimes requiring the complainant to pre-emptively overcome the state’s possible defences. This chapter seeks to identify relevant trends in order to both better understand current UNTB practice and illuminate paths to greater consistency and clarity in admissibility determinations.

Before accessing the UN treaty bodies’ individual communications procedure, a complainant must have exhausted domestic remedies. This admissibility rule exists for good reasons, but it has limits. In particular, exemptions must be recognised in respect to domestic remedies which lack effectiveness, including accessibility. Regrettably, UNTBs are currently reverting to a formalistic and mechanical application of this admissibility rule. What justice requires, however, is the opposite: an expansive consideration of the plethora of barriers that prevent access to domestic justice, as well as a reflection about how each barrier can realistically be evidenced by a complainant. This can be achieved, this chapter argues, through an individual-centred, contextual approach, which achieves the aim of preventing the state from escaping international scrutiny, while highlighting the crucial role domestic justice should play in remedying human rights wrongs.

Over decades of reviewing individual communications, the Human Rights Committee (HRC) has developed greater consistency when shifting the evidentiary burden between the author and the state in its decisions on individual communications. The grounds on which this shift is made, including the nature of the allegations, the evidence used to corroborate the allegations, and the extent to which the state engages with the process, seem to impact the articulation of the shifted burden in certain cases. To effect this burden shift, the chapter explains that the HRC appears to follow three steps when assessing claims of a breach of the prohibition against torture: (1) the allegations must be corroborated by some level of evidence; (2) the HRC applies a rebuttable presumption that the author’s alleged facts are true; unless (3) the state offers evidence in direct response to the specific allegations of torture.

Chapter 1 explores young women’s experiences growing up in their fathers’ households to situate this group in a broader understanding of social reproduction in urban Nigeria. At the heart of the chapter lies young women’s recognition that they must live up to their parents’ expectations of becoming eligible ‘wife material’ but that this process is complicated by their desires to conform to particular cosmopolitan identities as well as by interferences coming from ‘the village’. The chapter details young women’s childhood memories and the domestic challenges faced by the ‘girl child’ in urban Nigeria, before moving on to describe the various strategies young women have for managing their reputations as they seek to have fun in the city and look towards a future shaped by marital responsibility. Illuminating how social reproduction in Calabar is governed by the tensions of visibility and invisibility, the chapter highlights how it is not only the boundaries of feminine respectability that start at home but also the ways in which feminine identities can be shaped by uncertainty.

Human rights violations often form part of a pattern or practice of violations, rather than being purely isolated incidents. This context is not consistently taken into account by UNTBs during individual case consideration, however. This chapter explores several ways in which awareness of human rights violations’ embeddedness in wider contexts of violations should inform UNTB practice. In particular, the chapter considers the impact, or potential impact, of patterns and practices of violations on the manner in which UNTBs receive information, and the sorts of sources they recognize in their decisions; on UNTBs approaches to the exhaustion of domestic remedies and the burden of proof; on case structuring; and on findings, recommendations and follow-up procedures. The chapter ends by observing that UNTBs are not only receivers but also key disseminators of information, and suggests ways in which their findings as to the patterns and practices of violations may be more effectively disseminated.

Chapter 3 continues to explore young women’s engagement with Pentecostalism by focusing on the advice given out by pastors about dating and marriage. Complicating analyses that suggest Pentecostalism’s popularity with young women across Africa is attributed to how the religious movement equips them with clear guidance on relationships, the chapter shows that this new ethical counsel only contributes to the uncertainties this group encounter in daily life in urban Nigeria. As the chapter’s ethnographic material details, against pastors’ very straightforward and frank advice, young women find that their relationships with men are often ambiguous. Not only are young women aware of the possibilities that the men they date might have other girlfriends, but they are also shown to participate in less than transparent activity as they engage in intimate relationships that are not intended to lead to marriage. Examining how young women engage in gossip and rumour to conceal their actions, which often take place in plain sight on the streets of Calabar, the chapter shows how young women use unverifiable information to forge their own image of respectability.

The introductory chapter explains the importance of worldview studies and their emergence in contemporary society. It outlines the book’s aim to explore some basic religious and secular outlooks on life, presenting them as distinct yet coherent rival worldviews.

Pushbacks are designed to prevent people on the move from accessing procedural and/or substantive legal safeguards. States thus tend to deny practising them and actively erase evidence of their occurrence. The resulting acute evidentiary challenges in any subsequent human rights litigation require adjustments to be made to the evidentiary framework. This chapter offers a four-branch matrix of what can logically happen to facts disputed in litigation. It then proceeds to critically examine how evidentiary issues have been handled in UNTB pushback case law, concluding the right findings have been made, but on a generally weak reasoning. The chapter finally stresses that the burden of proof should be shifted from complainant to state when two conditions are met: a context-proven to a high standard, such that the state can be presumed to have violated human rights; the complaint is linked to this context – with this proven prima facie. If the linkage is evidenced to a higher standard, the factual allegations must be recognised as established on the strength of the evidence –without any shift being alluded to, so as to avoid an upward slippage in the purposefully low standard of proof applied.

This chapter addresses evidence-related recommendations for the consideration of the UN treaty bodies. Written by three practitioners from the civil society sector, with direct experience of the individual communication procedure before the UNTBs, it also benefited from input from all the contributors to the volume, which it concludes. Part I offers normative reflections. It deals with legal questions, including: What should the applicable standard be when determining human rights claims? How should this standard vary according to the type of claim and the stage of the proceedings? In what circumstances and under which conditions should the burden of proof be shifted from the complainant to the respondent state? Part II deals with organisational, and thus more mundane issues, but it highlights how proper identification and communication of the applicable evidentiary concepts and norms are essential to a transparent, accessible and fair system, therefore necessitating proper resourcing.