By Bertha Badu-Agyei
Accra, May 24, GNA – The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, through its Child Marriage Unit, has trained key stakeholders on the Gender-Transformative Accelerator (GTA)Tools as part of efforts to end child marriages in Ghana.
The two-day training workshop, held in Koforidua, was designed to complement and integrate the tools and processes under phase three of the Global Programme to End Child Marriage.
The GTA, developed by the UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme, is a participatory tool for programme staff, partners and stakeholders, to critically assess progress on core elements to shift interventions and accelerate efforts towards ending Child Marriage.
Hajia Saphia Tamimu, the Head of the Child Marriage Unit of the Gender Ministry, said the training aimed at equipping participants with the understanding of the tools, as well as building collaborations in the efforts to end Child Marriage among other objectives.
She said globally there was decline in Child Marriage, however progress in Ghana had not been encouraging as one in every five girls in Ghana was married off before age 18.
Gender inequality, poverty and gender discriminative norms remained some of the key factors in Child Marriage, which was common in rural areas and poor households in Ghana.
She said statistics showed that about 180,000 girls had been involved in marital unions in Ghana, emphasizing the need for an accelerated effort to end Child Marriage.
Dr Doris Aglobitse, the Head of Gender Unit at UNFPA, said per the laws of Ghana no girl under 18 years of age should be married off under any circumstance whether pregnant or not.
Citing the recent Gborbu Wulomo issue, where an alleged 12-year-old girl was married off, she observed that matters of the law and cultural practices came to play, adding “that calls for a national understanding of our legal framework and how to navigate that within the cultural settings”.
She said there was ongoing stakeholder engagements with the Chieftaincy Ministry to critically look at the unwritten traditional laws which strengthens some cultural practices which infringed on the laws protecting the rights of the girl child.
Mr Richard Obeng Boafo, a Deputy Director at the Ministry of Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs, said his outfit was engaging with traditional and religious leaders as part of efforts to end Child Marriage.
GNA