Parents, stakeholders urged to support fight against child marriage
The Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Ms Otiko Afisah Djaba, has re-emphasised the need to fight child marriage in the country, as it has become a threat to national development.
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Speaking at a steering committee meeting of a global programme to stop child marriage in Accra yesterday, the minister called on parents and other stakeholders to support all initiatives to end child marriage.
“No girl child must be married before 18 years, she has the dream to be who she wants to be. As a nation, we should ensure that both the boy child and the girl child are allowed equal opportunity to education, it is not a society of only men,” she said.
Educating the girl child, according to her, was critical to the development of a nation and that to be able to solve the problems affecting the girl child, there was the need for everybody to work together to end child marriage in the country.
UNICEF/UNFPA
As part of the initiative, the Director of the Programmes Division of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF ), Mr Ted Chaiban, said the issue of child marriage had denied the girl child the opportunity to education, and also affected her health.
He said through the support of the government and civil society, Ghana would be able to eradicate child marriage by investing in education, engaging in dialogue with young girls, and through the commitment of the Gender Ministry, the country would lead the way in fighting and eradicating child marriage.
He, therefore, encouraged stakeholders to invest in the girl child by educating her to appreciate the implications of child marriage and to help girls to be responsible to contribute to national development.
For his part, the Director, Technical Division for United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Mr Benoit Kalasa, said in order to effectively deal with the issue of child marriage, and to realise the developmental goal of the country, there was the need to educate the girl child.
Background
As part of their initiative to end child marriage, the UNFPA and UNICEF have partnered with the government of Canada, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the European Union, to support their governments in accelerating action to end child marriage through a framework that promotes the rights of girls to put them in the right situation to delay marriage, tackle the conditions that keep the practice in place, and care for girls already in union.
The programme focuses on enabling girls at risk of child marriage to choose and direct their future, supporting households in demonstrating positive attitude towards adolescent girls, and also targets adolescents aged between10 and 19, who are at risk of child marriage or already in the union.