Gender ministry intensifies efforts to end child marriage.
Gender ministry intensifies efforts to end child marriage.
Gender ministry intensifies efforts to end child marriage.
The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social protection (MoGCSP), has organised a program on child marriage and harmful cultural practices in Ghana.
The conference was to sensitise, raise awareness and share information on issues about child marriages and other negative cultural practices that impede the progress of women and girls and relegate them to subservient roles in communities.
She also said the experienced the highest rate of child marriages in the country, where more than one-third of young women, about 39 per cent, were married during childhood.
According to the Head of the Child Marriage Unit, Hajia Saphia Tamimu, said, globally 16 million children were married off annually before age 15, pointing out that South and East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa had the highest prevalence rates of early child marriages globally.
“There is, therefore, an urgent need for all actors to double efforts to end this phenomenon to avert the inter -generational transfer of poverty and ensure girls’ empowerment,” she added.
The Head of the Child Marriage Unit, Hajia Saphia Tamimu, said as part of Ghana’s pledge and commitment to eliminate child marriage, MoGCSP had developed a National Strategic Framework for ending child marriage (to run till 2030) and that was being implemented by the Child Marriage Unit of the ministry
She said the framework contained specific strategies that included increased access and retention of adolescents, particularly girls in primary, secondary and complementary basic education, increased access of girls, married adolescents to health information and services, including family planning, and increased access to vocational training and other training programmes for out-of-school girls and married or teenaged mothers.
She added that the ministry had established a single window call centre to provide a unified case management system which would provide a single platform for citizens to lodge complaints and monitor grievances, including child marriage, domestic violence, as well as to disseminate relevant information on such issues. the Head of the Child Marriage Unit, Hajia Saphia Tamimu, called on stakeholders to promote the prevention of early child marriages among other harmful cultural practices against women and girls.
Story by Fada Amakye from Daily Sun.
