Categories: News

Zambian Govt Set To Criminalise Child Marriages

Milagrosa Manuel and Aristida Alvarenco Morgado.Milagrosa is 18 years old and her son Aristida is 1year old.Milagrosa lives with her inlaws. There are 12 family members living on the property. Milagrosa is closest to the other 2 daughter-in laws.Her husband returns on weekend.from his job in a surrounding town. They met through her sister as she heard that her inlaws was looking for a wife for their son. Miligrosa was vunerable as her family had passed away. She was in Grade 7 when she left school. Aristida is her second child. Her first child passed away not from the same father.Her husband cared for the child.

The Zambian Government said it was in the process of reviewing a law governing marriages in order to criminalise child marriages, state media on Thursday reported. Minister of Gender Victoria Kalima said the government has been prompted to review the Marriage Act because it was concerned that the problem of early marriages had continued in spite attempts to discourage it.

The ministry, she said, had been making wide consultations on criminalising child marriages and that so far tremendous progress has been recorded.

“We are harmonising the Marriage Act because the constitution states something else. We want to harmonise the age of a child,” she was quoted as saying by the Times of Zambia.

Criminalising child marriages would help to deter parents or guardians from marrying off underage children for fear of being jailed, she added.

Zambia has over the years been experiencing the problem of child marriages involving girls below the age of 18, especially in rural parts of the southern African nation.

The country has one of the highest child marriage rates in the world, with 42 per cent of women aged 20 to 24 years married before 18 years.

Source: Vanguard