Eradicate poverty to stop child marriages- MP says

Manicaland legislator Fanny Chirisa says one of the major reasons why girls marry early is poverty as some parents are forced to marry off their children to make sure that the remainder of the family survives.

“Poverty is the worst enemy when it comes to child marriages,” she said in her contribution to the debate on eradicating 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.”

“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.”

Chirisa urged her colleagues to discuss child marriages in their constituencies because it affected everyone.

Full contribution:

HON. CHIRISA:  Thank you Mr. Speaker.  First of all, I want to thank our Parliament. Unfortunately, the Leader of Government in this House has gone.  I wanted to say this during his presence because our Portfolio Committee on Women’s Affairs – when it went out in Mashonaland Central for hearings on child marriages, it did a great job.  Our Portfolio Committees are very effective because even SADC picked it up from that trip by the Women’s Affairs Portfolio Committee to Mashonaland Central.  We should thank ourselves and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done – [HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.]-

Mr. Speaker, child marriages are a wide spread problem.  Child marriages are not only prevalent in Zimbabwe but everywhere.  This is a problem that needs to be sorted out by a coordinated group, nation, region, continent and world because every nation is being affected.

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