By Morgen Makombo Sikwila
Child marriages are of a major concern in Zimbabwe as we focus towards Vision 2030.
Child marriage, which is commonly known as early marriage, is defined as a marriage or union in which one or both spouses are younger than 18 years old. Child marriage is a gendered phenomenon that proportionately affects girls when compared with boys.
Child marriage is not only regarded as a human rights issue but also as a barrier to development. Early marriages have negative outcomes for girls and future children. Child Marriages threatens the lives, well being and future lives of girls.
Young women who marry early are more likely to drop out of school, suffer gender-based violence, have poor sexual and reproductive health outcomes, contract sexually transmitted infections including HIV and are likely to die due to complications during pregnancy and child birth.
Due to poverty within families, children dropout of school as parents cannot afford to pay school fees, and thus these parents may offer the child to wealthy man for marriage. Child marriages, reduces employment opportunities and income for affected girls, hurts economies and reinforces intergenerational cycles of poverty among the girls, their families and communities.
Child marriage is more prevalent among the world poorest countries, communities and families. The key drivers of child marriage is poor social, physical and health outcomes for young girls, especially adolescents. The key drivers of child marriage are complex, diverse and interlinked. They include factors at the household and individual levels as well as macro socio-economic aspects that are context-specific. Factors that cause child marriages act as both causes and results of child marriage.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, cultural and social norms, religious, traditional beliefs and norms, the perception that marriage is an achievement and will ‘protect’, family honour, customary or religious laws that condone the practice. The decision to marry children of younger age is often rooted in poverty and as a strategy by families to navigate through hardships.
Poverty pushes parents to migrate for work; motivate families to marry off their daughters and forces girls to seek out exploitative relationships or marriages as a way out of poverty. Wealth is consistently protective of child marriage. Poverty and economic hardships limit a family’s options and child marriage viewed as a way to reduce household poverty and relieve the financial burden that girls place on their families.
Girls are usually married off to reduce the family’s perceived economic burden, with their bride price used by families as means of survival. Poor households see child marriage as economically beneficial in the short term, but it does not improve the economic status of the household over the long term or provide financial stability and or security for the future, potentially due to the lost financial capital of married girls and women not working.
Child marriages compromise the development of girls, consequently resulting in early pregnancy and social isolation, with little education and poor vocational training reinforcing the gendered nature of poverty.
Child marriage is associated with harmful socio-economic outcomes for women, including lower levels of participation in politics and household decision-making and worse marriage market outcomes. Gender inequality, especially in communities where women have low status, is a root cause of child marriage.
Most traditional cultures practice child marriages. Culture is associated with family honour, safeguarding virginity, family prestige and gender discrimination. In some African cultures, virginity is valued by the husbands and honoured by families.
A girl has to be married while still a virgin. Thus, there is need to ensure that the child’s virginity is maintained at the time of marriage. The general belief in such communities is that the younger the girl, the higher the chances of being a virgin.
Religion is one of the key drivers of child marriage. In Zimbabwe, it is prevalent among the Apostolic sects faith groups.
Education plays a key role in preventing child marriage. Girls with lower levels of education or no education are more likely to be married as children. When given proper education, girls tend to enter marriage and deliver children later in life and give birth to few children. The educational level of the girl and her parents is a protective factor against early marriage.
Education among girls delay the onset of marriage and increases their autonomy and the power to make decisions regarding their future marriage plans. Adolescent girls face heightened barriers to accessing education compared to their male peers due to gender economic inequality.
Child abuse is one of the drivers of child marriage. This includes sexual, physical, economic (in terms of resource deprivation: lack of school fees and other basic needs) and emotional violence in the home perpetrated by guardians, relatives or biological parents can be reasons why adolescent girls seek out marriage as an escape.
Understanding the key drivers of child marriage is crucial in the efforts to eradicate child marriages. Poor families tend to favour child marriages to improve the economic situation in their households in the shorter term, but not in the longer run and suggest greater investment in social protection and poverty eradication by the government and partners, and Zimbabwe to be an upper Middle Class country by the year 2030.
Communities should be supported to lead the design, implementation and monitoring of accountability mechanisms to ensure that laws aimed at protecting, supporting and caring for the adolescent are context-specific and relevant to the needs and priorities of adolescents in all their diversity and do not cause further harm or stigmatization of already married girls.
It should be ensured that child marriage policies and advocacy drive equitable economic and social change. Any advocacy should be inclusive of married and out-of-school adolescents, as well as adolescents living in child headed households and food-insecure communities.
Morgen Makombo Sikwila
Masters in Peace and Governance
BSc Counselling
Diploma in Environmental Health Health
Certificate in Marketing Management
email morgensikwilam@gmail.com
Phone Number: 0772823282
