Hastings Women’s Law Journal Volume 19 Article 3 Number 2 Summer 2008 1-1-2008 Posthumour Children, Hegemonic Human Rights, and the Dilemma of Reform - Conservations Across Cultres Uche Ewerlukwa Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hwlj Part of the Law and Gender Commons Recommended Citation Uche Ewerlukwa, Posthumour Children, Hegemonic Human Rights, and the Dilemma of Reform - Conservations Across Cultres, 19 Hastings Women's L.J. 211 (2008). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hwlj/vol19/iss2/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Women’s Law Journal by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Posthumous Children, Hegemonic Human Rights, and the Dilemma of Reform - Conversations Across Cultures Uch6 Ewelukwa" I. INTRODUCTION Mr. Nnanyelugo Nnebechi Okonkwo (Okonkwo), a native of Onitsha, a town in southeastern Nigeria, died in 1931.1 During his lifetime, Okonkwo had five male children.2 Thirty years after Okonkwo's death, his sisters, acting purportedly under Onitsha native law and custom, married a wife (X) on his behalf.3 X gave birth to six children who all bear Okonkwo's name.4 In a case that was fought all the way to the Nigerian Supreme Court (Supreme Court), the central questions before the Supreme Court were whether the living can legally contract a marriage on behalf of the dead and whether a man can procreate thirty years after his death.