CHILD MARRIAGE: TOWARD A PARADIGM SHIFT
Child marriage can be defined as the giving into marriage of a minor into marriage against the domestic laws of a country and against international law such as the UN CRC.
According to some studies in Africa 42 percent of women aged 15 to 24 were married before the age of 18 (UNICEF)
(1). In Zambia the practice is still quite widespread and many causes have been forwarded for this situation. One major reason is left-over cultural practices that put a high premium on marriage for girls. Other reasons are economical in nature being based on the need for families to survive the hard times. In a situation where a family is failing to feed all it's young ones the temptation to hand the girls over to "benevolent" husbands is high.
Sometimes, however, the children themselves will start having affairs quite early in life to survive or out of peer pressure. These affairs, usually with older more economically stable men, may sometimes lead to unsanctioned marriages. This particular type of child marriage goes generally unreported and proves to be hard to control. The focus currently is more on the infamous arranged marriage normally organised by guardians and parents of young girls. Not much emphasis is placed on the more urbanised occurrence where the young girls, usually teenagers aged fourteen to eighteen simply move in with men out of desperation.
It is more fashionable to study the rural situation where most of the arranged marriages occur. However, with the advent of HIV/AIDS and of mass numbers of orphans and even chid headed homes it is necessary to begin to study this new phenomena where young girls simply marry themselves off to survive. In the high density settlements of urban Zambia it is increasingly becoming acceptable to allow girls below eighteen to settle in homes when they drop out of school. Ofcourse child defilement laws are slowly beginning to be applied but these can only where a child or family reject the early marriage. When families are too exhausted by poverty to consider early marriage as a problem then they will ignore and even encourage the early marriage. Girls who marry themselves off this way will often become the envy of their peers, especially if the marriage is succesful economically.
It is important to start accepting the fact that moral challenges face girls as they do all other human beings. Sometimes the attraction to get married early has to do with truancy on the part of the child. Urban challenges and new freedoms are placing a great burden on family heads. Single mothers struggling to look after their children sometimes simply get overwhelmed by their children's refusal to heed advice. Perhaps it is time that studies where done to investigate the impact of urbanisation on the young girls in Zambia. This should be done in the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and other socio-economic factors impacting on family control mechanisms.
Alex Fundafunda
CRM
(1) Violet Mengo, Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service,statistical extract from article posted on Citizen Journalism in Africa Website on March 13th, 2008. www.citizenjournalismafrica.org
