Anti-child marriage durbar held in Gwollu


The Executive Director of the Centre for Development Initiatives (CDI), Alexis Dery Danikuu says child marriage is creating and widening the dependency rate and poverty in parts of the Upper West Region. 

He said the phenomenon manifests itself in a vicious cycle in Upper West and as a result “one person has to work to feed eleven people whilst in other jurisdictions 10 people work to support one person”. 

Mr. Danikuu who made the observation at a durbar of chiefs at Gwollu in the Upper West Region on community empowerment against child marriage (CEACM) stated that the dependency pressure makes it difficult for people to save to manage emergencies. 

GBC’s Emmanuel Mensah-Abludo reports that CDI is working on five different programs of which one of them is the child rights and protection program. 

Mr. Danikuu said the National House of Chiefs has endorsed the initiative on community empowerment against child marriage and that CDI was very appreciative of the presence of 16 chiefs including the Paramount Chief of Gwollu, Kuoro Kuri-Buktie Limann at the CEACM durbar in Gwollu as moral voices in the fight against child marriage. 

Mr. Danikuu reiterated that “the future of Ghana depends on the quality of children we are bringing up and taking care of who will hold the mantle for us in the future”. 

The Paramount Chief of Gwollu, Kuoro Kuri-Buktie Limann who dwelt on the “legal perspective on child marriage” cautioned his chiefs, elders and subjects about child marriage, saying the practice is not only illegal in Ghana and that international conventions and treaties equally proscribe it. 

He said incidentally Gwollu West District shares a border with Burkina Faso and that people should not have the impression that if child marriage is banned in Ghana they can go across the border to pick under-aged girl as a wife or people from Burkina Faso coming down to do same. 

Kuoro Limann emphasized that in the purview international conventions, “if a person comes from Burkina Faso and says he is coming to marry under-aged girl here, do not accept and certainly you cannot also go to Burkina Faso and marry a girl who is under age and go scot-free”. 

The Paramount of Gwollu particularly pointed out that in Ghana, there are laws that protect and promote the rights of children against all kinds of human rights violations. 

The Criminal Code (Act 29), criminalizes acts that are directly or indirectly associated with child marriage, Kuoro Limann added. 

The Sissala West District Adolescent Health Co-ordinator, Sulley Mohammed announced that 73 point four percent of school drop-out cases of girls in the area are marriage related and mentioned organized marriage, elopement, forced marriage, as well as teenage pregnancy as some of the causes. 

Quoting the Adolescent Reproductive Health Data, Mr. Mohammed pointed out that in 2015, 690 teenage pregnancies were recorded out of which, 353 of the girls were delivered of their babies with 10 reported abortion cases. 

He continued that, in the first half of 2016, 296 teenagers had so far been captured in terms of pregnancy, 161 deliveries and five abortions. 

The Sissala West District Adolescent Health Co-ordinator was of the view that in some cases, the girl-child is neglected at the family level where the girls are allowed to grow to a certain level before parents start talking to them about sex education and by that time, things are out of control. 

Mr. Mohammed emphasized that traditional rulers as well as all interested parties should be advocates and champion the cause of advancing a better future for young people, saying, “let us pay their school fees, not their bride price”. 

The Programs Officer of CDI, Stanislav Dery who led a discussion on the need for the girls to be supported to realize their potentials to the fullest, indicated that the fight against child marriage should not be an individual effort but a communal one through consensus and determination.

GBC