Empower girls to fight early marriages -Activists

CHILD MARRIAGE |GIRL CHILD

Media has been awash with stories and reports showing the increase in child marriages all over the entire country.
National statistics show that the increase in child marriages in the year 2020 has almost doubled.

Different regions in the country have suffered the impact of early child marriage. Eastern region (464), Northern (2500), Western (1628) and central (128). This has worried child rights activists, who think that fighting the vice should be a joint effort from all concerned parties.

Moses Ntenga, the director of Joy for children says children especially girls below the age of 18 have been forced to marry during the lockdown something that puts their lives at risk.

He says its time all concerned parties raise up for a common cause.

Delay marriage/promote school
Ntenga believes that if parents, political leaders, church leaders and all those concerned raise up and start preaching against early marriage among children, promote continuity in school.  Parents will open up and share their experiences with child marriages and many will give up the vice.

Empower girls from poor families with self-help projects
Irene Mbabazi the Director for Centre for Tomorrow notes that many times the girls that are married off at an early age, come from poor families, that can barely afford to provide basic needs to sustain them.

She said such families look at this girl as a source of wealth, and in the end, they marry her off at an early age. That means such girls are denied a chance to continue with education.

Mbabazi notes that such families need to be skilled in things they can do to earn a living. Self-help projects like rearing chicken, pigs or goats can be of great help.

She calls upon government to stand with such families and support them to keep girls in school.

Provide scholastic materials
Mbabazi notes that lack of scholastic materials and lack of sanitary pads is one of the reasons girls drop out of school and end up getting married.

She says when men notice that the girls lack something, they take advantage of that and try to provide what the girls lack in exchange for sex.

Let's raise up and teach these girls to make reusable sanitary pads and let's provide scholastic materials. This can be achieved if we work as a team, "says Mbabazi.

Encourage community dialogues and distribution of learning material
Ntenga notes that during the lockdown, the rate at which girls have been married off for bride price has increased more than ever. He adds that with the easing of the lockdown, it is important that government engage community leaders in the different districts in the country and hold disscussions to address the issue of early child marriages.

He said learning materials should be distributed to the community members to ensure continued learning during the lockdown
He encouraged leaders of different districts, to come up with advocacy campaigns to end child marriages.

Empower girls with information, skills and support networks
According to Ntenga most girls do not know their rights therefore, they yield to their parent's dictatorship. When a parent says that the girl should prepare for marriage, no one stands up for the girls' rights but all those around support what the girl's father says.

Let us educate girls about their rights and how to fight for them by reporting whoever tries to violate them. He went ahead and identified the different people that the girls can report to incase their rights are violated.