‘Govt committed to ending child marriage’
The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Ms Otiko Afisah Djaba, has re-stated the government’s commitment to end child marriage, saying it is a priority of the government.
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She said the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection had, therefore, taken significant steps towards the promotion and coordination of national initiatives aimed at ending child marriage in Ghana in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and with support from the Royal Netherlands Embassy.
She, therefore, called on parents, traditional leaders, the media and other stakeholders to recognise that child marriage was a violation of human rights that had a devastating impact on both boys and girls.
Ms Djaba was speaking at the opening of a three-day African Union Regional Capacity Building Workshop on Increased Advocacy to Ending Child Marriage through engagement of the media in Accra. She said girls of school age were usually the victims of child marriage, saying that that was a sad reality which, must change.
She said child marriage, which hindered the full potential of the girl-child, as well as the health and well-being of their children, continued to be a major child protection issue facing most African countries.
Participants
The workshop brought together media personnel, donor partners and non-governmental organisations working in the area of child rights from 11 African countries.
The countries were Ghana, Gabon, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Senegal, Togo, Gambia, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Mali and Cameroun.
The minister said child marriage remained one of the serious child protection issues plaguing Africa, as such “we must work together to protect and promote the well-being of all children.”
Statistics
Globally, Ms Djaba said, more than 700 million women living today were married before their 18th birthday. Out of this number, more than one in three were married before they turned 15.
In sub-Saharan Africa, she said, a staggering 40 per cent of girls marry before age 18, adding that African countries accounted for 15 of the 20 countries with the highest rates of child marriage.
In Ghana, the national average on child marriage is 21 per cent.
According to the 2014 Demographic and Health Survey, one out of five girls were married before their 18th birthday.
These statistics, she said, called for an urgent need to speed up the process of eliminating child marriage as statistics predicted that the number of child brides in Africa was likely to double by 2050 at the current pace of intervention.
She said Ghana firmly believed that as a signatory to the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) and African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (AFRWC), “we have a duty to protect all children; a duty to ensure that children are safe from harm, especially from all forms of harmful practices like child marriage”.
Driving force
Ms Djaba said though factors driving child marriage varied among countries in Africa, there were some similarities such as families suffering from acute poverty and, who, thus, viewed their children as a financial burden and married these children off as an economic survival strategy.
Also, she said patriarchy and gender inequality were underlying factors driving child marriage, saying that it had also been observed that the fear of stigma of teenage pregnancy and the perception that girls were a financial burden to families also encouraged the practice.
Call to action
The government, she said, had passed the Children’s Act (1998) and the Child and Family Welfare Policy which were some of the instruments that had demonstrated political will to ending child marriage in Ghana.
She said it was worth noting that issues of child marriage had received greater global attention which had become important in the global action against child marriage. She buttress this with the recent adoption of a Second Resolution on Child, Early And Forced Marriage (CEFM) by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at its 71st session, as well as the ongoing African Union Global Child Marriage Programme being developed and supported in 12 countries.
The minister also said the UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to Accelerate Action to End Child Marriage being implemented in 12 countries, including Ghana, was a testament to the enormous work being done to end child marriage across the world.
Ms Djaba also said child marriage was also high on the agenda at the recently held 28th AU Summit where African leaders renewed their commitment to fight the menace.
She said she was, therefore, optimistic that the workshop would enhance the capacity of media personnel to contribute to credible awareness creation to reach large numbers of people, since engaging with the media and ensuring increased and accurate coverage of issues of child marriage would help to reduce the menace across the region.
She said the enormity and complexity of the problem of child marriage demanded urgent action and called for even greater collaboration and coordination among all stakeholders especially the media, to help drive home the message of zero tolerance for child marriage on the African continent.
