MDC YOUTH ASSEMBLY STATEMENT ON THE DAY OF THE AFRICAN CHILD
19 June 2015
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On 16 June every year, the African Union celebrates the Day of the
African Child (DAC), in commemoration of the 1976 protests by school
children in Soweto, South Africa in which they protested against the
use of Afrikaans as a mode of instruction in schools, a move designed
to further the purposes of the apartheid regime. The students
protested against the poor quality of their education and demanding
their right to be taught in their own language. This ignited a
protracted struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa and
in 1991, the African Union Assembly passed a resolution designating 16
June as a Day for the celebration of the African child.
The MDC Youth Assembly joins the rest of Africa in commemorating the
2015 Day of the African Child under its theme “25 Years after the
Adoption of the African Children’s Charter: Accelerating our
Collective Efforts to End Child Marriage in Africa”. Child marriage
practices specifically in Zimbabwe has been exacerbated by an ailing
economy and declining standards of living as a result of the failure
by Mugabe and ZANU Patriotic Front to revive the moribund economy and
addressing policy discord by focusing on politically expediency at
the expense of pragmatic bread and butter issues. Trends that we have
witnessed in the country indicates that as a result of high poverty
levels, child marriages have been considered a poverty escape route
and this has robbed many girls of their innocence, girlhood and
opportunity to further their education and improve their livelihoods
thus entrenching them and their future families further in poverty,
limiting their life choices and generating high development costs for
communities. The Assembly notes in instances were once married, girls
are most likely to feel powerless to refuse sex and or insist on
condom use by husbands who are usually older and more sexually
experienced making the girls vulnerable to HIV including STIs. Child
marriage can result in bonded labor or enslavement – a sentence to
regular exposure to domestic or sexual violence and a pathway to
commercial exploitation and in most instances come under intense
pressure to fall pregnant immediately after marriage presenting a
major risk for both mother and baby.
We join all relevant stakeholders fighting for legislation that
provides support and education assistance for young girls that fall
pregnant which to date is still surprisingly absent in our country.
The MDC Youth Assembly hold up the Civil Society Consultative Dialogue
on Ending Child, Early and Forced Marriage in Africa at the 24th
African Union Summit for 2015 in Ethiopia that was hosted along the
side-lines of the AU Summit. Cooperating partners like Girls Not
Brides, UN Women, Plan International and others pledged to provide
resources to scale-up efforts to end child marriage and the Youth
Assembly posits that child marriage is a development, human rights and
safety issue for girls. Notably, approximately each year about 15
million adolescent and teenage girls are married around the world and
in most instances forced into marriages by their parents. In
sub-Saharan Africa, 40% of girls are married by age 18, which
translates to two in every five girls. There are 41 countries
world-wide with a child marriage prevalence rate of 30% or more. Of
these 41 countries, 30 are from Africa. According to the United
Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the State of the World’s Children’s
Report (2015), the prevalence of child marriage indicates that
Mashonaland Central leads with 50%.In second place is Mashonaland West
42%, Masvingo 39%, Mashonaland East 36%, Midlands 31%, Manicaland 30%,
Matabeleland North 27%, Harare 19%, Matabeleland South 18% while
Bulawayo has the least prevalence with about 10%.
Although Zimbabwe is a signatory to many international treaties and
conventions such as the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of
the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) child marriage is still remains a
big concern. Zimbabwe has also failed to harmonize the marriage laws
in order to make it easy to prosecute offenders. The new constitution
defines children as any person under the age of 18 years. However, the
customary act is silent about marriage issues and this makes it
difficult to handle child marriages.
As we commemorate the Day of the African Child, the MDC Youth Assembly
notes with regret that as a country we have a Constitution that
protects children against child marriages, but lacks enforcement. The
Assembly was left in awe by the recent move by our local courts to set
the age of consent at 12. Zimbabwe’s criminal code appears to have set
the age of consent at 16 but the law provides absolute protection in
cases of rape to children under the age of 12. Such ambiguity within
our governing laws should be dealt with as we have seen young girls
exposed to abuse and sex predators getting away with it. We thus call
upon the relevant arms of government and authorities to raise debate
and to embark on proper documentation of the challenges of child
brides so that in informs debates and programs aimed at curbing the
practice.
The Assembly would like to applaud the role that the media has been
playing in highlighting the dangers and consequences of child
marriage, information dissemination and stimulation of debate around
it.
In line with the above, the Assembly will be having commemorations in
the following areas
Bulawayo -Chitungwiza – Harare – Gweru and Mutare.
Brighton Makunike
MDC National Youth Assembly.
National Spokesperson