Centre advocates policy framework to protect rights of girls

The Centre for Development Initiatives (CDI) has advocated an enhanced legal and development policy framework to protect the right of the adolescent girl.

It is calling for the enforcement of the law that sets 18 years as the minimum age for marriage and the plugging of loopholes related to parental consent or customary laws.

The Executive Director of CDI, Mr Alexis D. Danikuu, made the call at a preparatory review meeting to round up the Community Empowerment Against Child Marriage (CEACM) project it had undertaken and how to sustain the project after the sponsorship period.

Beneficiary districts

The CEACM project, an 11-month sponsorship advocacy programme by the CDI, in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), was carried out in four districts in the Greater Accra and Upper West regions.

The beneficiary districts in the Greater Accra Region were the Adentan, Madina and the Ashaiman municipalities, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) and the Sissala West Assembly in the Upper West Region.

Outcome of meeting

The meeting provided an opportunity for  the CDI to share some of the project’s most significant lessons, changes and key observations made in communities within the municipality.

Mr Danikuu said the project had been strongly embraced by the two project Regional Coordinating Councils.

He added that the organisation also planned to organise the end-of-project review and sustainability meeting with the staff of the Sissala West District Assembly.

Resources for adolescent girls

Mr Danikuu said there was the need to increase resources for adolescent girls who are affected by child marriage.

“That is, empower girls, enable girls to value themselves, to know and exercise their rights, to develop skills to support themselves and to have opportunities/safe spaces to connect with their peers and support one another,” he explained.

He stressed the need to mobilise families and communities as agents of change by creating awareness of the harmful impact of child marriage and of alternative roles for girls and women, so that families and communities would prefer not to marry their daughters as children.

Mr Danikuu said by so doing the families and communities themselves would take part in efforts to end child marriage.

Violation of rights

Touching on the impact of child marriage, he explained that “when a girl is married as a child, her fundamental rights are being violated.”

“Ending child marriage can preserve a girl’s childhood, promote her right to education, reduce her exposure to violence and abuse, as well as contribute to breaking cycles of poverty that are passed down from one generation to the next,” he explained.

Mr Danikuu explained that delaying marriage and childbirth could further protect girls from the risks of HIV and sexually transmitted infections, death during childbirth and debilitating medical conditions such as obstetric fistula.

“Infants born to adolescent mothers are 60 per cent more likely to die in their first year and are more likely to be malnourished,” he stated. 

Such girls, he said, “are more likely to describe their first sexual experience as forced. As minors, child brides are rarely able to assert their wishes, such as whether to use family planning methods or practise safe sexual relations.”