Stop early, forced marriages
The Executive Director of the Legal Recourse Centre, Ms Daphne Lariba Nabila, has called on media practitioners and the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) to impress on Parliament to raise the age of consent to sex by girls from 16 to 18 years.
Advertisement
She said when this is done, it would conform with the age for marriage, which is 18 years and, therefore, protect girls from being forced into marriage.
That, she said, would also prevent the numerous cases of Child Early Forced Marriages (CEFM) in the country.
Ms Nabila explained that since the legal age for sex in the country was 16 years, most girls got pregnant around that age and had to either marry at that early age or were forced into marriage before they turned 18 years.
The Executive Director was speaking on the state of the law on CEFM at a day’s workshop organised by the NCCE for media practitioners from the Eastern, Volta and the Greater Accra regions to educate them to CEFM in the country at Akosombo.
She said the law made early or forced marriage of children a crime in the country, and that was punishable by law. She added that people who had information on CEFM who refused to report to the appropriate authorities would also be prosecuted when they were found out.
The Chairperson of the NCCE, Mrs Charlotte Osei, explained that CEFM was the practice where underage children, especially girls, were forced into marriages, cutting short their education and preventing them from contributing effectively to the development of the nation.
She gave the assurance that her outfit would join hands with the media to expose this horrible social occurrence against children.
The NCCE, she said, had organised a series of workshops for traditional authorities to educate them on the consequences of forcing underage children, especially girls, to marry, even if their customs and traditions allowed that.