Accra, Sept.28, GNA – Dr Afisah Zakaria, Chief Director, Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MOGCSP), has called on stakeholders to deepen collaborations with the Ministry to end child marriage in the country.
She said the collaborations by partners and stakeholders would help in information sharing on programmes, activities and interventions to enable others learn and draw experiences and best practices to ensure that the interventions were well targeted.
Dr Zakaria made the call during the launch of the Child Marriage Portal on Tuesday in Accra, which would provide relevant information on the interventions by partners and serve as a platform for increasing awareness about laws, frameworks as well as best practices on eliminating child marriage.
In other to effectively address these issues, she said, there was the need for concrete steps, strategies and frameworks to guide programmes and activities, therefore the Ministry and its Development Partners had developed a 10-year Strategic Framework and Monitoring and Evaluation plan to end child marriage in Ghana.
The Chief Director said, the importance of credible information and data could not be over emphasised since data was needed to inform next lines of actions and future policy directions in the effective implementation of the 10-year strategic framework (2017-2026) and its Operational Plan.
She said, however, access to credible information and data in certain areas had posed a challenge for development practitioners in Ghana, and to complement national efforts by Government and Civil Society partners, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Ghana Office, had assisted the Ministry to develop the Information Portal in 2020 and a validation was done at an annual Stakeholders’ Meeting in December 2020.
Dr Zakaria said child marriage was a union between two parties in which both or one was under the age of 18 years and was a form of domestic violence that limited a young girl of her skills and abilities, resources, knowledge, social support, mobility and autonomy.
According to her, the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2017/18 indicated that, Greater Accra had the least cases of child marriage representing 8 per cent, while the Northern and Upper East Regions recorded the highest cases of 28 per cent respectively.
Madam Agnes Kayitankore, Deputy Country Representative, UNFPA, said child marriage remained widespread despite laws against it.
Globally, one in every five girls marry before the age of I8.
That, she explained threatened the lives and health of these girls and limited their future prospects.
She said UNFPA’s support to the Ministry was evident of the organisation’s commitment to end all forms of gender-based violence and secure the rights and dignity of all by 2030.
She said child marriage had been a precursor to gender-based violence and the interconnectedness through digital and technological transformation would help to enhance national efforts aimed at eliminating Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) and other harmful practices.
The Deputy Country Representative urged stakeholders to utilise the resources provided and criteria to share the best practices on the Portal to create robust mechanisms to protect, promote and enforce the rights of vulnerable young girls in the country.
Justice Eudoria Christiana Dadson, a High Court Judge, said the Portal was appropriate and would aid to stem the issues of child marriage and domestic violence in the country.
Mr Oppong Mensah, Chief Director, Office of the Head of Local Government Service, assured the MoGCSP to deepen their collaboration to sensitise those involved in the acts of child marriage on the social, psychological and economic implications involved.
He added that the policies against child marriage must be implemented at the local level since those involved in the act lived within the communities.
GNA