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Cabo Verde
Summary of Domestic Prohibition
Slavery and slave trade
Provisions related to slavery are found in the Penal Code at article 271 which criminalises ‘reducing another person to the state or condition of a slave’ as well as selling, transferring, or buying a person, and keeping a person in a state of slavery. Enslavement as an element of genocide and war crimes is also criminalised under articles 268 and 272.
Practices similar to slavery
There appears to be no legislation in place in Cabo Verde which prohibits institutions and practices similar to slavery.
Servitude
There appears to be no legislation in place in Cabo Verde which prohibits servitude.
Forced or compulsory labour
Provisions related to forced labour are found in the Labour Code which prohibits forced labour at article 14.
Human trafficking
Provisions related to human trafficking are found in article 271-A of the Criminal Code. ‘Pimping’ of children under 14 and solicitation of a minor for sexual acts abroad are criminalised by articles 148 and 149 of the Penal Code.
Forced marriage
Provisions related to forced marriage in Cabo Verde are found in the 1997 Civil Code, which addresses the marriage contracted with lack of will or with the will addicted by error or coercion at Article 1593. Article 1599 also addresses marriages celebrated under moral coercion, when the spouse is illegally threatened and there is a serious fear.
Consent to marriage
Although legislation in Cabo Verde does not recognize consent as a strict requirement of marriage, article 1554 of the Civil code1997 recognizes that marriage is founded on voluntary union. Article 1593 further recognizes that the consent of a party or prospective party to a marriage is invalidated where the person is subjected to coercion. Article 1567 recognizes that consent is invalidated where the person has not attained marital capacity or is of unsound mind.
Servile marriage
There appears to be no legislation in Cabo Verde that prohibits servile matrimonial transactions.
Marriage trafficking
There appears to be no legislation in Cabo Verde that prohibits marriage trafficking.
Minimum age for marriage
The minimum age for marriage in Cabo Verde is 18, without differentiation by gender, as set out on Article 133 of the 1997 Civil Code. However, marriages below this age are permitted with the consent of their parents, as set out on Article 1575 of the 1997 Civil Code. These exceptions are not differentiated by gender, and allow marriage as early as 16. Where marriages are conducted involving a person below the age of 16, the marriage is voidable, as set out on Article 1593 of the 1997 Civil Code.
Region
Africa
Regional Court
Not party to a court
Legal System
Civil
International Instruments
International Obligations
- Slavery
- Servitude
- Forced Labour
- Human Trafficking
- None
Regional Organisations
- African Union
- ECOWAS
Legislative Provisions
THE CONSTITUTION OF CABO VERDE 1980 (REV. 1992)
Article 14. Recognition of the inviolability of rights, liberties and guarantees
- The State recognizes as inviolable the rights and liberties granted by the Constitution and guarantees their protection.
- All public authorities have the duty to respect and guarantee the free exercise of rights and liberties and the accomplishment of constitutional or legal duties.
Article 16. The scope and meaning of rights, liberties and guarantees
- Laws and international conventions may grant rights, liberties, and guarantees not provided for in the Constitution.
- The extent and the essential content of constitutional norms regarding rights, liberties, and guarantees may not be restricted by means of interpretation.
- Constitutional and legal norms regarding fundamental rights may be interpreted and integrated in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
- The law may restrict rights, liberties, and guarantees only in cases specifically provided for in the Constitution.
- Laws restricting rights, liberties, and guarantees must be general and abstract, may not be retroactive, may not reduce the extent and essential content of constitutional norms, and must be limited to what is necessary for the safeguard of other constitutionally protected rights.
Article 17. Legal enforcement
Constitutional norms regarding rights, liberties, and guarantees shall bind all public and private entities and shall be directly enforced.
Article 26. The right to life and to physical and mental integrity
- Human life and the physical and moral integrity of persons shall be inviolable.
- No one may be subjected to torture, or to cruel, degrading or inhuman punishment or treatment; and in no case shall there be the death penalty.
Article 27. The right to liberty
- The right to liberty shall be inviolable.
- Freedom of thought and expression; association; religion; worship; intellectual, artistic and cultural creation; demonstration; and other liberties consecrated by the Constitution, by laws, and by International Law or convention shall be guaranteed.
- No one may be forced to declare his ideology, religion, or political or union affiliation.
Article 28. The right to liberty and personal security
- Everyone has the right to liberty and security. No one may be deprived partially or totally of his liberty except by virtue of a judicial sentence for acts punishable under law by prison or by the judicial application of security measures.
…
Article 58. The right to work, to welfare, to holidays, and to material assistance
- All citizens shall have the right to work, and the State has the duty to create the conditions necessary for this right to be effective.
- Progressively and in accordance with national economic development, all workers shall be assured of adequate social welfare in the event of illness, industrial accident, old age, and unemployment; periodic paid holidays; rest; leisure; and material assistance.
Article 59. The right to compensation and to security of employment
- Everyone shall have the right to compensation in proportion to the quantity and quality of work and to security of employment.
- Dismissal for political or ideological reasons shall be prohibited.
- Dismissal shall be illegal without legitimate cause enacted by law.
- All workers shall have the right to dignified working conditions, to hygiene and security, to a limited working day, to rest, leisure, and weekly time off.
- Men and women shall receive equal pay for equal work.
- The law shall establish special protection for minors, for the handicapped, and for women during pregnancy and after childbirth, and shall guarantee to women working conditions which permit them to carry out their family and maternal duties.
Article 60. National minimum salary and maximum limit to working hours
The State shall set national standards regarding limiting the duration of work and shall create conditions for establishing a national minimum wage for various occupations.
Article 87. Childhood
- All children shall have the right to the special protection of the family, society, and the State to guarantee conditions necessary for the whole development of their physical and intellectual capacities, and special care in case of orphans, abandoned children, or the emotionally deprived.
- The family, society, and the State must guarantee the protection of children against any form of discrimination or oppression, as well as abusive authority from family, public or private institutions to whom they are entrusted,and also against exploitation through child labor.
- Child labor shall be prohibited during the years of compulsory schooling
PENAL CODE AS AMENDED IN 2015
Article 148. (Pimping)
1 – Those who promote, encourage or facilitate the exercise of prostitution or sexual acts of children under 14 or persons suffering from mental incapacity, shall be punished with imprisonment for 2-8 years.
2 – If the victim is under 16 years, the penalty is imprisonment of 1 to 5 years.
3 – The penalty referred to in the preceding paragraph shall also apply if the victim person is in a situation of extreme economic necessity and the agent have taken advantage of this situation.
Article 149. (Solicitation of minor to practice sexual act abroad)
Those who solicit, transport, harbors or receives less than 16 years, orfavor conditions for the practice of this in a foreign country, of sexual acts or prostitution shall be punished with imprisonment for 2-8 years.
Article 162 (Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment)
1 – Anyone who commits acts of torture or cruel, degrading or inhuman against another person, shall be punished with imprisonment from 2 to 6 years if a more serious punishment does not fit under other law.
2 – For the purposes of this section, it is the act of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, the act by which severe pain or acute suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person that has the function of knowledge, pursuit, research, application or enforcement of penalties for offenses of any kind, or by the person exercising functions of custody, protection or surveillance of a person detained or arrested, or even by those who have, for the purpose, usurped one of those functions, in order to:
- a) obtain from him or a third confession, testimony or information;
- b) The punishment for acts committed or allegedly committed by her or third;
- c) intimidate or to intimidate another person.
Article 163 (Aggravation)
1 – The penalty is imprisonment from 5 to 12 years if the conduct described in Article antecedent:
a) Causing serious bodily harm or mental harm to the victim;
b) is performed with particularly violent methods, vexatious or serious, including by electric shocks, systematic beatings, sexual abuse the victim or his family, mock execution or use of hallucinatory substances.
2 – The penalty is imprisonment from 8 to 15 years if the conduct resulting disease serious and incurable disease, suicide or death of the victim.
Article 268 (Genocide)
A penalty of 15 to 25 years’ imprisonment shall be imposed as punishment upon anyone who, as part of the execution of a concerted plan, and with the intention of destroying, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, religious or other group identified on the basis of some arbitrary criterion, carries out any of the following acts with respect to members of that group:
(b) deportation, enslavement, or abduction followed by disappearance;
Article 271 (Slavery)
A penalty of six to 12 years’ imprisonment shall be imposed as punishment upon anyone who reduces another person to the state or condition of a slave, or who sells, transfers or buys another person, or who possesses another person with the intent of keeping that person in a state of slavery.
Article 272 (Crimes against persons subject to protection in a situation of armed conflict)
A penalty of 10 to 20 years’ imprisonment shall be imposed as punishment upon anyone who, in violation of the provisions of international law, in a situation of armed conflict, carries out against any person subject to protection
(d) deportation, enslavement, or kidnapping or abduction,
(e) forced conscription into enemy armed forces,
unless some more severe penalty applies pursuant to some other legal provision.
Article 278 (Other crimes against the international community)
A penalty of one year’s to three years’ imprisonment shall be imposed as punishment upon anyone who, in time of war, armed conflict or occupation, carries out or orders the carrying out of any other act that constitutes a breach or violation of the provisions contained in international agreements by which Cape Verde is bound, relating to the conduct of hostilities, the protection of the injured, ailing and shipwrecked, the treatment of prisoners of war, and the protection of civilians in the event of war, armed conflict or occupation.
Article 271-A (Trafficking in Persons)
1. Whoever offers, delivers, induces, accepts, transports, accommodates or welcomes a person for sexual exploitation, labour exploitation or organ extraction:
a) by violence, kidnapping or serious threat;
b) By deception or fraudulent maneuver;
c) By abuse of authority resulting from a relationship of hierarchical, economic, work or family dependence;
d) By taking advantage of the victim’s psychic incapacity or special vulnerability; or
e) By obtaining the consent of the person having control over the victim shall be punished by imprisonment of 4 to 10 years.
2. the same penalty shall be imposed on any person who, by any means, induces, transports, accommodates or accepts a minor, or delivers, offers or accepts him/her, for purposes of sexual exploitation, labour exploitation or organ extraction.
3. In the case provided for in the preceding subparagraph, if the staff member uses any of the means provided for in subparagraphs (1) or acts profitally or with intent to make a profit, he shall be punished by imprisonment of between 6 and 12 years.
4. Any person who, by payment or other consideration, offers, delivers, solicits or accepts a minor, or obtains or gives consent for his adoption, shall be punished by imprisonment from 1 to 5 years.
5. Whoever, having knowledge of the crime foreseen in numbers 1 and 2, uses the services or organs of the victim shall be punished by imprisonment from 1 to 5 years, if a more serious penalty is not applicable to him by virtue of another legal provision.
6. Whoever detains, conceals, damages or destroys identity or travel documents of a person who is a victim of a crime provided for in paragraphs 1 and 2 shall be punished by imprisonment of up to 3 years, if a more serious penalty does not fall under another legal provision
7. Victims of trafficking in persons shall not be held criminally liable for having entered the national territory illegally or for having participated in any way in illegal activities, insofar as they are the direct consequence of their situation as victim.
LABOUR CODE
Article 14 Forced Labour
- No one shall be required to perform forced labor, is understood to be the obligation of a person to perform, under the menace of any penalty, a job or service for which it has not offered himself voluntarily.
- They are not considered forced labor those resulting from judicial convictions, as well as works and services for the community, required for any person, in case of war, disasters, fires, floods, famine, earthquakes, epidemics and diseases violent and in all circumstances that endanger or threaten to endanger the life or normal conditions of existence of all or part of the population
CONSTITUTION OF CAPE VERDE 1980 (REV. 1992)
Article 46 (Marriage and affiliation)
- Everyone has the right to marry, in civil or religious form.
- The law regulates the civil requirements and effects of marriage and its dissolution, regardless of the form of celebration.
- Spouses have equal civil and political rights and duties.
- Children can only be separated from their parents, by judicial decision and always in the cases provided for by law, if they do not fulfill their duties fundamental to them.
- Discrimination against children born out of wedlock is not permitted, nor the use of any discriminatory designation relating to affiliation.
- Adoption is permitted, and the law must regulate its forms and conditions.
The Constitution of Cabo Verde 1980 (Rev 1992) – NATLEX – English (PDF)
CIVIL CODE 1997
Article 133 (Minors)
Minors are those who have not yet reached the age of eighteen.
Article 1554 (Notion of marriage)
Marriage is the voluntary union between two people of different sex, under the terms of the law, who intend to constitute the family through a communion full of life.
Article 1567 (Absolute direct impediments)
These are direct impediments, preventing the marriage of the person whom they respect with any other:
- The age of less than sixteen years;
- Notorious dementia, even during lucid intervals, and interdiction or disqualification due to psychic anomaly;
- The previous marriage was not dissolved, even though the respective seat was not recorded in the civil status record.
Article 1570 (Impedent impediments)
Impedent impediments, in addition to others provided for in special laws: a. Kinship in the third degree of the collateral line;
b. The bond of guardianship, trustee or legal administration of assets;
c. The pronouncement of the spouse for the crime of intentional homicide, even if not consummated, against the spouse of the other, as long as there is no resignation or acquittal, which is final;
d. The opposition of the parent or guardian of the minor spouse
Article 1575 (Opposition by parents or guardian)
- When he has not given his consent, either the parent or the minor’s guardian may file an opposition to the marriage under the terms prescribed in the civil registration laws.
- Deducted the opposition, the marriage can only be celebrated if the competent court judges it unjustified.
Article 1587 (Civil ineffectiveness)
A religious marriage that is celebrated in violation of the legal provisions on its processing does not produce civil effects.
Article 1588 (Criminal sanctions)
The religious wedding celebrant who violates the legal provisions set forth in this Book or in the civil registry code incurs the sanctions established in criminal law.
Article 1590 (Non-existent marriages)
It is legally non-existent:
a. The marriage celebrated before those who had no functional competence for the act;
b. The marriage in whose celebration the declaration of the will of one or both of the spouses was lacking, or of the attorney of one of them;
c. Marriage contracted by means of a proxy, when entered into after the effects of the power of attorney have ceased, or when it has not been granted by those in it as a constituent, or when it is void due to the lack of special powers for the act or designation expressed by the other contractor;
d. Marriage contracted by two people of the same sex.
Article 1593 (Causes of annulment)
Marriage is voidable:
a. Contracted with some impediment direct;
b. Contracted, on the part of one or both of the spouses, with lack of will or with the will addicted by error or coercion;
c. Celebrated without the presence of witnesses required by law.
Article 1595 (Validation of marriage)
The annulment is considered to have been solved and the marriage is valid from the moment of the celebration, if before the decision of annulment becomes final, any of the following facts occurs:
a. The marriage of a non-nubile minor being confirmed by the latter, before the civil registry official and two witnesses, after reaching the age of majority;
b. If the marriage of the banned or disabled due to psychic anomaly is confirmed by him, under the terms of the preceding paragraph, after the ban or disqualification has been lifted or, in the case of a notorious dementia, after the insane person has judicially checked his state of health mental;
c. The first wedding of the bigamist is annulled;
d. The absence of witnesses is due to circumstances that are acceptable and recognized as such by the top manager of records, notary and identification, as long as there are no doubts about the execution of the act.
Article 1596 (Presumption of will)
The declaration of the will, in the act of the celebration, constitutes a presumption not only that the spouses wanted to contract the marriage, but that their will is not vitiated by error or coercion.
Article 1597 (Nullability due to unwillingness)
Marriage is voidable due to unwillingness:
a. When the spouse, at the time of the celebration, was not aware of the act he performed, due to accidental incapacity or another cause;
b. When the spouse was in error about the physical identity of the other contractor;
c. When the declaration of will has been extorted by physical coercion;
d. When it has been simulated.
Article 1599 (Annulment due to moral coercion)
- Marriages celebrated under moral coercion are voidable, provided that the evil with which the spouse is illegally threatened and the fear of its consummation is serious.
- The illicit threat is equated with the fact that someone consciously and unlawfully extorts the declaration of will from the spouse by promising to free him from a fortuitous or other-caused evil.
Article 1602 (Annulment based on vices of will)
The action for annulment based on vices of will can only be initiated by the spouse who has been the victim of the error or coercion, but their relatives, who are related in a straight line, heirs or adopters, may continue if the plaintiff dies pending the cause.
Article 1605 (Annulment based on lack of will)
The action for annulment due to the unwillingness of one or both of the spouses can only be initiated within the three months following the celebration of the marriage or, if the latter was ignored by the applicant, within the six months following the moment when he became aware of it.
Article 1610 (Marriage of minors)
- The minor who marries without having asked for the consent of his parents or guardian, being able to do so, or without waiting for a favorable decision from the court in the case of opposition, continues to be considered a minor as regards the administration of the assets he takes to the couple or who subsequently they come to you free of charge, until the age of majority, but the income necessary for your condition will be arbitrated from the income from those goods.
- The assets taken away from the administration of the minor are administered by the parents, guardian or legal administrator, and in no case can they be handed over to the administration of the other spouse during the minority of their consort and, moreover, do not answer, for debts contracted by or both spouses in the same period.
- The approval of the marriage by the parent or guardian causes the sanctions prescribed in the preceding paragraphs to cease.