Do not force me to ripe - I am not a fruit
“I was only 10 years when my parents started referring to an elderly man who comes to our compound at least once every week as my ‘husband’.”
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“The final straw broke when I was asked to go and live with him the day I completed Primary Six because he had finished paying my bride price”.
“Still a child, I thought I was only going to live with him so I can continue my education, since my parents always struggled with the payment of my fees without his support.
An 11-year old’s ordeal
“I was, however, wrong. My first night with him was the most terrible and longest night I had ever experienced. Everything was painful. Screaming was painful, crying was painful and pushing him away from me was impossible because he was huge and tall and I was just a tiny girl with no strength to withstand him.”
Today, Mariama (not her real name), who speaks fluent English, is in Accra with the last two of her five children. She is 28 years and says she wishes she could still go to school because “I know I am still young, but who can I tell to support me? My mother died when I had my third child seven years ago and as for my father, the least said about him the better.”
She left the north where she used to reside with her husband to Accra where she works as a cleaner in some offices and shops around Tudu in Accra because she says; “My husband has undertaken another project. That is ripping them young before they grow, just like he did to me. I am the third of five young wives. I do not know my husband’s age but I am sure he is over 60 years. The eldest of his wives, although a little older than me, looks older than our husband. The youngest who was sent to his compound less than two years ago will not be more than 14 years and she is already pregnant with her second child.”
Child marriage a time bomb
Child marriage is rife, especially in Africa. According to the Global Partnership to End Child Marriage, an initiative of the African Union (AU), every two seconds, a girl is married before she is physically or emotionally mature enough to become a wife or a mother.
Globally, 720 million women living today were married before their 18th birthday. Every year, they are joined by another 15 million more girls.
A harmful traditional practice, child marriage robs girls of their education, their health and their future. In Africa, high rates of child marriage, combined with a rapidly growing population, could have devastating effects on humans and development.
In sub-Saharan Africa, 40 per cent of women are married as children. Child marriage is widespread in West and Central Africa, where 42 per cent of women are married as children, and in East and Southern Africa where child marriage affects 37 per cent of girls.
Africa is home to 15 of the 20 countries with the highest rates of child marriage in the world.
According to the Ghana Demographic Health Survey, 2008, six per cent of women aged 15-49 were married before the age of 15, and 27 per cent before the age of 18. The comparative figures for men aged 15-59 are one per cent (married before the age of 15) and five per cent (before age 18).
The number of girls marrying before age 18 is highest in the Upper East Region—39 per cent, followed by the Western Region— 37 per cent, and Upper West Region—36 per cent.
Similarly, the number of girls marrying before the age of 18 is nearly twice as high in rural communities (36 per cent) as compared to urban ones (19 per cent).
Article 21:1 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child calls for prohibiting “child marriage”, using the term to describe a legal or customary union between two people, of whom one or both spouses are below age 18.
According to the AU Campaign to End Child Marriage, children subjected to child marriage are physically, physiologically and psychologically unprepared to shoulder the responsibilities of marriage and childbearing.
A life-threatening venture
At a regional capacity-building workshop on “Increased advocacy to ending child marriage through engagement of the media” from West and Central Africa held in Accra recently by the AU Campaign to End Child Marriage, the causes of child marriage were identified to include poverty, tradition, serving as a safety guard and because girls are considered as burdens in some families.
The Coordinator, AU Project on Child Marriage, Ms Nene Thundu, in a submission at the media advocacy, was emphatic that child marriage denied girls their right to education as over 60 per cent of child brides in developing countries had no formal education.
Child marriage, she said, “also puts girls at risk of sexual, physical and psychological violence throughout their lives as they are more likely to be beaten or threatened by their husbands than girls who marry later.”
Child marriage, she explained, could have life-threatening health consequences such as complications in pregnancy, maternal deaths and injury in pregnancy or childbirth, including obstetric fistula which stands at 65 per cent in girls under the age of 18.
Commitments
In September 2013, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted a resolution, which Ghana supported, banning child marriage.
In 2015, global leaders included a target to end child marriage in the recently adopted United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In 2014, the African Union (AU) launched the Global Partnership to End Child Marriage initiative.
The following year (2015), the AU, together with the Government of Zambia convened a high-level meeting to enhance continental awareness of the effects of child marriage and to accelerate the end of child marriage in Africa. The outcome of this Girls Summit to End Child marriage was a renewed commitment to eliminating child marriage in Africa not later than 2030.
In Ghana, in February 2016, the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP) launched an Ending Child Marriage Initiative, which engaged different sectors of the government, civil society organisations, development partners, media, children, religious and traditional leaders in a joint effort to eliminate child marriage in the country.
Plan International Country Director, Ms Fadimata Alanchar, at the end of the advocacy workshop, charged the media to highlight issues on child marriage to help save children from being forced to grow into adulthood through marriage.
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