Zimbabwe Parliament calls for criminalisation of child marriages as 4 500 are forced out of primary school in one year

MOTION

SADC MODEL LAW ON ERADICATING CHILD MARRIAGES

HON. GONESE: I move the motion standing in my name:

That this House:

NOTING the unanimous adoption of the SADC Model Law on eradicating Child Marriage and protecting those already in marriage at the SADC PF in Ezulwini, Swaziland on the 3rd of June, 2016;

ACKNOWLEDGING that the Model Law addresses all the issues and matters related to and incidental to rights and concepts relating to the Child Prohibition of Child Betrothal and Marriage, as well as measures and interventions to mitigating the effects of child marriages, offences and enforcement;

RECOGNISING that the Draft Model Law can be adopted with minimal changes to constitute a holistic, comprehensive and all – embracing legislation dealing with the subject matter;

DESIROUS that child marriages must be ended as a matter of urgency;

NOW THEREFORE, calls upon the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs to forthwith introduce this Model Law to Parliament so that it becomes part of Zimbabwean law with suitable changes.

HON. MPARIWA:  I second.

HON. GONESE:  Thank you very much Mr. Speaker Sir.  I think that the motion is very straightforward and I would like to say that Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you for this opportunity to move this very important motion.  Mr. Speaker Sir, before I go into the substance of the motion, I want to start by referring to a newspaper article which really illustrates the extent of the problem.  We have been talking about the issue of eradicating child marriages for a long time and I think that the time has now come for action.  It is not sufficient to merely go on and on saying that we want to bring this scourge to an end.  We now want to get to a stage where we can actually have the actual implementation.

As I have just indicated, before I go into the substance of the model law, I just want to make reference to a recent article in the Herald which brings home the extent of the problem.  The article was just last week on the 22nd of November, 2016, where it was revealed by the Hon. Minister of Primary and Secondary Education that 4 500 pupils had dropped from school in just one year alone Mr. Speaker.  What is really alarming is that out of that number, 3 650 are females and only 251 are males.  It illustrates that the problem is more pronounced and affects the girl child more than it does the boy child.

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