According to a United Nations report, Coronavirus pandemic could lead to extra 13 Million Child marriages over the next decade as a result of deepening poverty caused by the pandemic.
A 2018 world Bank report indicates that Child marriage will cost African countries tens of billions of dollars in lost earnings and human capital, as over three million (or one-third of) girls in Sub-Saharan Africa marry before their 18th birthday each year.
The 2017/2018 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) report contained in a Ghana Statistical Service Survey put the national child marriage prevalence rate at 19 percent, an improvement on the previous MICS that was 25.9 percent in 2006 and 27 percent in 2011.
Deepening poverty caused by Coronavirus pandemic may be pushing more parents to marry their daughters off while they remained children in Ghana as the pandemic is already having a devastating effect on families, communities, and the economy.
As a result, a project dubbed Girls Advocacy Alliance is being implemented by Plan International Ghana in partnership with International Child Development Program (ICDP) to empower communities to end child marriages and gender-based violence in 84 communities in Upper West, Northern and Eastern Regions. 52 of the communities representing 62% have been declared child marriage free.
In the Eastern Region, 13 out of 24 intervention Communities have achieved Child marriage free status have been certified at a ceremony in Koforidua. The Communities are Kwamoso, Agavenya, Oyoko, Suhyen, Jumapo, Saforo, Baware, Abenawia, and Onyame Bekyere. The rest are Kobokobo, Nsutem, Awukugua, and Koforidua Zongo.
At a brief ceremony on Friday, the Country Director of Plan International Ghana, Solomon Tesfamariam, said the project which seeks to end Child bride and gender-based violence will be extended for another three to five years to benefit more Communities and ensure that the menace is eradicated.
The Chief Executive Officer of ICDP, Joyce Lanyo, said the beneficiary communities have been empowered to sustain the program to ensure that Child Marriage never happens in their communities.
“The baseline data that we had, child marriage was quiet predominant in the communities but was a hidden agenda that was perpetuated by parents, mothers, fathers into the communities. But with this project and the training we gave to the community, child protection teams, and the champions of change with support from Government agencies like the CHRAJ, DOVVSU they realized the illegality of children being given off in marriage may be due to their socio-economic circumstances.”
Some of the victims have been rescued, supported, and enrolled in schools to continue their education.
The leaders of the Child Marriage free Communities lauded the project and the positive impact made.
They admitted that previously, they gave off young girls to marry as soon as they are impregnated by men or when men express interest in the young girls and assumed responsibility to take care of the girl child due to poverty and lack of knowledge about child marriage.
However, the project has changed the phenomenon as many parents in the communities have been adequately sensitized and empowered.
Source: Mybrytfmonline/Obed Ansah
