Tanzania among 20 countries practising early marriages Waryoba Yankami It has been revealed that Tanzania is among 20 countries in the world that have been practising early marriages. Speaking during a two-day East African regional conference on child marriage, yesterday in Dar es Salaam, the Director of Gender, Children and Social Development, in the ministry of Community Development, Gender and Children, Tukae Njiku, said majority of women who got into early marriage have been found to be infected with HIV/Aids. In Tanzania, on average two out of every five girls are married before reaching 18 years. The 1971 Marriage Act allows for girls as young as 14 (with special permission) and always allows 15 years old girls to marry. However Niger with 74.5 percent leads the table, followed by Chad’s 71.5 per cent and Mali with 70.6 percent, while Djibouti has the lowest rate of early child marriage at 5 per cent. Njiku said that 10 million girls in Africa are every year affected by early child marriages which deny them education and expose them to dangerous infections. She added that early child marriage should be a public concern rather than treating it as a private issue, while majority of girls get into harm’s way. Njiku suggested that it is time experts were trained to educate the public on the negative effects of early child marriage, saying laws were not enough to stop the practice. However, Jane Magigita from equality for growth (EFG) said many children Tanzania have no birth certificates making it difficult to determine their ages. Magigita said a good number of Tanzanian girls have found themselves in risky situations into their lives after becoming affected. For her part, the Tanzania Media Women Association (TAMWA) executive director, Valerie Msoka, said that marrying off a young child not only violated human rights but was dehumanization. She said the new constitution should spell out strategies to stop early marriages from the family level to the national level. She added that from primary schools, pupils should be taught all about gender desk so that they may be able to report their cases because there has been a tendency of parents who are involved in the case to solve these marriage cases traditionally. Forward, executive director, Naana Otoo-Oyortey said many young girls were forced into early marriages by their parents who had their eyes on the dowry. He mentioned that some of the causes that push parents to force their children into early marriage as poverty, low education and marriage by adoption. Apart from Tanzania other countries practicing early child marriages are: Bangladesh; Guinea; Central Africa Republic; Mozambique; Burkina Faso; Nepal; and Ethiopia. Others are Malawi; Madagascar; Sierra Leone; Cameroon; Eritrea; Uganda; India; Nicaragua; and Zambia. THE GUARDIAN
Posted on: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 22:07:15 +0000
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