Poverty major cause of child marriages as 60 percent of Zimbabwe’s households are headed by children

Q & A

HON. SEN. CHIMBUDZI asked the Minister of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development;

a)    to explain the real causes of early child marriages in Zimbabwe;

b)   to indicate the plans the Ministry has put in place to end early child marriages, particularly in rural areas;

c)    to inform the House whether the Ministry has embarked on education awareness in prisons where most women are incarcerated as a result of rape and theft convictions;

d)   to inform the House, what measures the Ministry has put in place to make sure that women in prisons get adequate sanitary wear during their terms of serving; and

e)    to clarify whether the Ministry has any policy relating to the monitoring of the use of condoms by females in the institutions of higher learning.

THE DEPUTY MINISTER OF WOMEN’S AFFAIRS, GENDER AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT (HON. DAMASANE): Mr. President of the Senate Sir, I would like to thank the Hon. Sen. Chimbudzi for raising the question.  Mr. President, the Ministry has identified poverty, culture and traditions, religion, inadequate and conflicting laws and trafficking as key drivers of child marriages.  Poverty influences the high rates of child marriages in Zimbabwe.

Marrying off young girls is common in rural areas, farming and mining communities where the educational, social and economic prospects for girls are usually very limited.  According to the Zimbabwe Development Health Survey of 2012, 60% of households in Zimbabwe are child headed.  This constitutes an already vulnerable group as they lack education and financial independence.  Twenty percent of those children are orphans and this perpetuates their vulnerability to child marriages. Mr. President Sir, many of these children are susceptible to early marriages as they view it as a means of survival.  Young girls are usually lured by old working class men whose economic fate looks more favourable than theirs.

Mr. President Sir, our cultural values have resulted in sharp gender inequalities, disadvantaging mostly women and girls.  Some practices such as kuripa ngozi/nxa umama eyinyumba (appeasing avenging spirits), attornment marriages, (kuzvarira/ ukwendisela), arranged marriages, ukulamuza/ kutamba chiramu and chigadzamapfiwa (where a niece is brought in as wife to the aunt’s husband after the aunt has passed on) are major cultural practices leading to child marriages.

Mr. President, child marriage is a product of cultures that devalue women and girls and discriminate against them.  According to a United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) Report on Child Marriage and Law, “discrimination often manifests itself in the form of domestic violence, marital rape, deprivation of food, lack of access to information, education, healthcare and general impediments to mobility.”

Certain religious practices fuel child marriages.  Girls and young women are married off before the legal age of marriage in the name of religion and church practice.  However, some repentant churches are fighting the scourge.  These member churches to the Apostolic Christian Council of Zimbabwe (ACCZ) have come up with a gender work-plan on activities to end child marriages.

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