World Vision launches child marriage project

World Vision International Ghana has launched a five-year campaign on ending child marriage.

The initiative is expected to help national effort to reduce child marriage by 50 per cent, as well as significantly enhance child well-being.

The campaign, dubbed: “End child marriage now! It takes all”, is aimed at addressing child marriage to enable the children, especially girls, to have the opportunity to enjoy their childhood and have the best of education to prepare them for a better future.

At a press conference to launch the campaign in Accra yesterday, the National Director of World Vision International Ghana, Mr Dickens Thunde, said child marriage placed children, especially girls, at an increased risk of sexual, physical and psychological violence throughout their lives.

For that reason, he said, World Vision International had rolled out the campaign which was aimed at improving the enforcement of child protection laws, improving policy implementation to end child marriage, strengthening institutions and faith communities to care and protect children from child marriage and improving incomes of vulnerable households.

He said the campaign would include dialogue with stakeholders on child protection, as well as advocacy, awareness creation and economic empowerment of vulnerable households.

Nonetheless, he appealed to the government to play its role effectively in the fight against child marriage by strengthening formal prevention and protection of children through the enforcement of laws and policies linked to child marriage.

He also called for the amendment of the Criminal Offences Act 1960 (Act 29 Section 14 (a) to raise the age of consensual sex of 16 to be consistent with the legal age of marriage of 18.

Provide adequate funding

He further called on faith and traditional leaders, civil society groups, the media, among others, to reinforce informal prevention mechanisms by promoting awareness and changes in community attitudes and harmful practices and empowering the youth as ambassadors for ending child marriage.

“We need to promote the resilience and voice of children through child empowerment and participation programmes to raise awareness of harmful practices for community action and engagement with local government on child protection issues,” he said.
 
Background

According to the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) Report of Ghana, on average, one out of five girls (20 per cent) in Ghana are married before their 18th birthday.

This equals 256,780 girls per annum. However, for girls living in the three regions of the northern part of the country, this number increases to one out of three girls (34 per cent).

While the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) indicates that the prevalence rate nationally remains the same at 27 per cent, it seems there is a widening gap between the northern and southern parts of the country.

The Northern, Upper East, Upper West and Western regions have more than 30 per cent prevalence. The rest of the regions have rates less than 30 per cent.

The Greater Accra Region has the lowest rate of child marriage at 18.5 per cent, with the Northern Region having the highest at 39.6 per cent. This shows an emerging trend that could be influenced largely by socio-economic factors and less by socio-cultural dynamics.