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

Secondly Mr. Speaker Sir, the Maputo Protocol is very clear that in order to be able to deal with some of these issues, we must have every marriage recorded. The reason is simple Mr. Speaker Sir, where marriages are not recorded, that enables situations where one cannot keep track of who is in this institution and who is not. Some of these instruments again, like CEDAW, are very clear. We have acceded to it but we are not implementing it, it simply states that the betrothal and marriage of a child shall have no legal effect and all necessary action shall be taken. We simply now need to have a piece of legislation which is very comprehensive. Mr. Speaker Sir, the model law goes further to make any child marriage which is existing at the commencement of a member state’s law on eradicating child marriage voidable at the option of a party to the proceedings. The challenge we have as I have already pointed out is that the Constitutional Court judgment has simply stated that child marriage is unconstitutional but it does not say what is going to happen to all those situations where people have entered into marriage at an early age.

This model law gives the answer and the answer is that where any child was forced by whatever circumstances to enter into a marriage before the age of 18, then they can now go to court and void that marriage. Obviously, it will not cover all the situations but we now have specific legal provisions that child marriage can then be voided at the instance of a party. It also defines what harmful practices are.

I have already mentioned about the reinstatement of the rights and so on. I would now like to go to other aspects which are very important. At the beginning of my presentation or submission, I indicated the challenge that we have of children who have had to leave school because they have been forced by circumstances to enter into marriage. That number is frightening as I have already pointed out. We are talking of over 4 000 just in one year alone.

The model law does not just confine itself to issues relating to child marriage or to marriage only, it also deals with issues of the right to education. It makes a provision that every child has got a right to free and compulsory primary education and to have access to secondary education. It also provides that all those children who have been victims of child marriage can go back to school, which I think is very critical because one of the issues which confront us is the situation where they drop from school and they are not able to continue with their education. This piece of legislation is very comprehensive. It does not just confine itself to the criminalisation of the child marriage but it goes further.

Then it also talks about the right to health and it enjoins the Minister of Health and Child Care to put in place the necessary mechanisms and have health policies which enable all those children to have access to health and medical services and so on. However, the model law is alive to the fact that even if you do legislate that children must not be married at a tender age, you still have got the problem of adolescents who are still in school who have reached the age of puberty. What the model law does is to encourage reproductive health to have that kind of education so that the young boys and girls become aware of the dangers of indulging in premarital sexual intercourse.

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