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

Mr. President, many countries have laws against child marriages.  The laws in most countries are inconsistent, thereby allowing perpetrators to get away with their crimes.  The Constitution stipulates that the minimum age of marriage for both boys and girls is 18 years yet the Marriage Act provides that the minimum age of marriage is 16 for girls and 18 for boys.  We await the re-alignment of the pieces of legislation.  The Customary Marriage Act on the other hand does not provide for the minimum age of marriage.  This inconsistency has contributed to perpetrators of child marriages to get away with child marriage related crimes.  Let us harmonise the Marriages Act without delay.

After realising that rape, child marriages and other forms of gender-based violence were on the rise, the Government of Zimbabwe through its Cabinet, set up an Inter-Ministerial Committee to end all forms of abuse.  This Committee is made up of the Ministries of Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community Development; Home Affairs; Public Service; Labour and Social Welfare; Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs; Primary and Secondary Education and Health and Child Care.

Mr. President Sir, the Ministry, in partnership with Development Partners and civil society organisations, rolled out the 18 + campaign in selected provinces which have high incidences of child marriages.  The campaign package included, among others, sensitisation of laws around ending child marriages, rape and domestic violence.  These provinces included Mashonaland East, Manicaland and Mashonaland Central.  This campaign has seen the sensitisation of the 150 traditional leadership structures on the Constitution and legal provisions prohibiting child marriages, health and economic consequences of this practice. The campaign is still to be rolled out to all the provinces.  However, all these programmes need to be strengthened and accelerated to reach our desired goal.

Mr. President Sir, in partnership with Non-Governmental Organisations and civic societies, the Ministry is carrying out dialogues with church leaders, particularly in the Apostolic and Zion communities.  The purpose of these dialogues is to bring about a positive change on the issue of child marriages and in the same breadth, accelerating its end and to come up with resolutions based on practice and not theory.  Mr. President Sir, the churches are implementing an action plan drafted during the Bishops’ Dialogue and some of the activities include awareness campaign on ending child marriages, conscientising parents to prioritise education instead of early child marriage for the girl child.  Also, economically empower poor families through promoting cash generated projects for example poultry, candle making projects, lokuholisana/mkando.

Mr. President Sir, the Ministry in 2014 developed the girls and young women empowerment framework.  This framework sets out strategies for protecting and empowering girls and young women of Zimbabwe.  It is anchored on five strategic areas of intervention namely; education, economic empowerment, reproductive health rights, safety and protection and leadership development.  The framework is currently guiding all relevant stakeholders working on girls and young women empowerment programmes in the civil society and other organisations.

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