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

The other critical point which is already covered in other pieces of legislation but what the model law seeks to do is to bring all this under one roof – is to provide for the right to registration of birth. We have got challenges in Zimbabwe where a lot of children, even now, do not have their births registered but if you make it peremptory that all births must be registered, it makes it easier to tell the age of a person so that any marriage officer simply has to have recourse to the birth certificate in order to establish whether someone has attained the age of marriage or not.

The model law goes on to provide legal aid and services to victims of child marriage because as of now, one of the problems that we have is that some of these victims may not have access to legal representation and the model law has provided answers that you must have legal aid which is availed to those victims.      The fourth part will deal with preventive measures and the necessary interventions and the establishment of any anti-child marriage fund whose main role will be to enable such victims to access the necessary assistance.

The model law also has provisions for restraining orders to be issued and for programmes but what is very important from the model law is that you are going to have training programmes for public officials to ensure that awareness is spread throughout the country through the establishment of community networks and so on and so forth. At the end of the day, this is just a first step and what I would like to do at this point in time is to point out that it is now our responsibility as the legislators to ensure that we implore the Executive to take on board this model law.

This model law has made the job of our Hon Vice President and his Ministry much easier. They have got a ready-made draft which they can just apply mutatis mutandis, with suitable changes to suit the requirements of our country. I would therefore say that, we would like to have the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs to move with haste and introduce this model law to this Parliament so that we can then implement some of the important provisions, particularly the criminilisation of all those who think that girls are wives when in fact they are children who should remain in class until they have completed their education.

With these words, I therefore seek the support of all Hon. Members and particularly the Vice President who has already indicated and shown his support by bringing to this august House early next year this model law so that it becomes part of our law and it enables us to eradicate and deal once and for all with the scourge of child marriage.

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