By Priscilla Oye Ofori
Accra, Dec. 29, GNA—Stakeholders at a capacity-building workshop on child marriage in Accra Have called on the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection to provide financial support to victims and survivors of child marriage.
They said the financial investment would help prevent the girls from falling back into child marriage because some parents were irresponsible.
The Child Marriage Information Portal, which was launched on September 29, 2021, is a one-stop-shop database system on child marriage in Ghana, developed by the Domestic Violence Secretariat under the Gender Ministry in collaboration with United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
The system readily shares information on child marriage, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) and its related issues in an open source by a press of a button.
This is part of the Secretariat’s commitment to addressing child marriage in the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Agenda, under Goal 5- eliminating all harmful practices, such as child early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation, with a specific target to eliminate child marriage by 2030.
Mama Awatsu Adzagba II, Central Regional Head, Department of Gender, said some of the girls were cohabitating, which was also an informal form of marriage with men who tended to take care of them.
She said the difficulty after taking them out or advising the girls to stop cohabitating with the men was providing them with funds to return to school.
“We are investing our time to follow up issues to make sure we do not allow them to keep their children in their house. If the Ministry could give the departments some money every quarter to support the girls it would be good,” Mama Adzagba stated.
Ms Maribel Okine, Western Regional Director, Department of Gender, said girls must be empowered and educated on issues of child marriage.
She said their empowerment would make them not succumb to the societal pressures of child marriage.
Ms Okine encouraged parents to place value on their girl child to curb child marriage saying: “If you have empowered and invested in your girl child, I do not think it will be easy for you to send your child into early marriage.”
Mr Abdul Lateef Abubakar, an Officer at the Department of Gender, Northern Region, bemoaned the expensive prospectus of Senior High School students, who gained admission this year were given.
He said there was a possibility that some parents especially in the rural areas were not able to send their children to school because they could not afford to buy items listed on the prospectus, hence, the girls particularly might be sent off to marry or become house helps, who could be abused.
GNA