By Joseph Nana Yaw Cobbina
The global trend is 15m girl marry before the ages of 18yrs each year. This means that each day 41,000 girls married and this translates into 28 girls getting married every minute.
Speaking at forum to marked the international day of the girl, the board member of Eduwatch, Madam Dorothy Konadu, said the Ghana Statistical Service reported that about 80,000 girls between 12 and 17 years are either married or living with a man. There is the need for us as a country to recognize that child marriage as a leading socio-cultural factor that keeps girls out of school.Currently, up to 49% of the 1.4m out of school children in Ghana are girls.
In 2016, Ghana adopted the National Strategic Framework on Ending Child Marriage to guide the implementation of activities towards a child-marriage-free society by 2030.
According to her, the framework provides community, policy and legal interventions intended to be implemented by institutions within the social protection and justice sectors. Civil society plays various roles at all levels to complement government efforts.
She noted that after six years of implementation, however, child marriage remains a major issue affecting the educational attainment of girls, thus compelling the president to make an additional commitment to mobilising resources to end child marriage in Africa. Current data from the Ghana Statistical Service gives the indication that child marriage is still endemic.
There is the need therefore to review the National Strategic Framework for the purpose of strengthening and improving the national response.
As part of the SERVE 3 project, and in line with civil society policy accountability strategy, Eduwatch with support from Star Ghana Foundation and funding from the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office(FCDO), has conducted a scoping study into the existing child marriage response system to identify the strengths and challenges, and make recommendations to improve system effectiveness.
Madam Konadu specifically, Eduwatch is interested in ascending the effectiveness of social protection and justice sector agencies response to incidents of child marriage, and how they help affecting girls reintegrate into society and access justice.
This convening is also part of the ongoing global 16days of activism against Gender-Based Violence. As part of the campaign, Eduwatch observes that the reduction in the allocation to the Domestic Violence Fund from GHC 2m to GHC 1m in the recently passed government budget is very unfortunate. This is because the lack of sufficient funds hugely affects the adequate provision of interventions towards addressing issues of gender based violence including child marriage.
According to her, as parliament begins the appropriation process, this opportunity to appeal to the house to increase the allocation to the Domestic Violence Fund to at least the 2022 level of GHC 2m.
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