There are disadvantages in child marriages because the girl, in most cases is below fifteen and very young. There are complications when this happens. When they get pregnant at that age, their bones are not yet strong and when they give birth, they end up dying during labour. They can give birth to disabled babies or they have still births. As a country, we do not want that kind of a record of having child marriages where children are giving birth and dying in the process.
There are so many reasons why we have child marriages in this country and everywhere else. Some of the reasons have been given by my colleagues who have debated before me. One major reason is poverty. Poverty is the worst enemy when it comes to child marriages. This involves even the parents who then make sure that their girl child is married to a rich community member or rich businessman so that the others could survive. I am glad that eradicating poverty is one of the factors in the ZIM ASSET and I hope that things will happen to alleviate poverty.
The other reason is the issue of tradition. There are some areas in Zimbabwe where girl children are given to old men because of poverty or because the parents say so or because the aunt, tete or the brother’s sister died and you have to look after the children. The young girl is inherited by the uncle or tete’s husband.
The other issue is the distance that the children walk to secondary schools, especially in the rural areas. What happens is, children look for accommodation near the school, away from their parents and they pay rent to villagers who give them accommodation. But, sometimes they do not provide them with food and the children are then forced to go to the growth points and business centres where they do all sorts of things including indulging in unprotected sex with older men so that they get food to eat while they are attending school. I think that this is also one of the major reasons.
The other reason is the gender based violence in the home where parents are always fighting and the girl child will say the only option is to go and get married to the next person who approaches her and gender based violence must also be dealt with if we are to alleviate this problem.
Mr. Speaker Sir, in addressing the child marriage problem as a country, we should look at the best solutions. As much as we have our three pillars of the Government, we also have three pillars in the development arena where we have the political side, the development side and the traditional side. If we are not careful, these three especially in the rural areas, each one will do his or her own thing because traditionally we do A, B and C. Developmentally we do A, B, C and politically we do A, B, C. They need to work together Mr. Speaker Sir, so that some of these problems that we are having today, especially in the rural areas are dealt with by the three pillars that I have talked about. In the urban areas, there are school development committees and there are church committees which can also address the child marriages problem, especially during these 16 days of activism where we are talking about the effects of gender based violence on families and on children. We are talking of peace in the home, peace in the nation and peace in the world but it starts with us.
I just hope that our colleagues in this House, each one of us will do his or her own part. When we go back to our constituencies, we should talk about the 16 days against gender based violence, especially the child marriages as it affects everybody if we are to maintain our good record as a nation. At SADC level, I think that we have done very well. The SADC introduced the ‘He for She’ and I think Zimbabwe was the first to launch the ‘He for She’. This model law will have to be the first again. I thank you Mr. Speaker.
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