A promise to girls: It is time we came together and took concrete action to end the grave injustice of child marriage

Ela Bhatt & DESMOND TUTU Oct 11, 2012

Today is our human family's first-ever International Day of the Girl.

This is a day to celebrate the fact that it is girls who will change the world; that the empowerment of girls holds the key to development and security for families, communities and societies worldwide. It also re-cognises the discrimination and violence that girls disproportionately endure - and it is especially important that one of the cruellest hardships to befall girls, child marriage, should be the UN's chosen theme for this inaugural day.

The marriage of adolescent girls, sometimes to much older men, sums up much of the harm, injustice and stolen potential that afflict so many girls around the world.

Ten million girls under the age of 18 are married off every year with little or no say in the matter. That's 100 million girls in the next decade. Their parents may feel they are doing the right thing to protect their daughters, but in reality these brides will be vulnerable to ill health, violence, inadequate education and poverty - as will their children.

Imagine, instead, the wonderful force we would unleash if these girls could be spared such a life.
They would be more likely to stay in school. Studies have shown that when girls stay longer in primary school, they earn wages up to 10 to 20% higher in their adult lives. As they get older, the differences in earnings are even more encouraging: for every extra year in secondary school, they can earn up to 25% more in adulthood.

These girls would also be more likely to be healthy, and less likely to contract diseases such as HIV/AIDS than married girls of the same age. And when these girls grow up and eventually start families of their own, we know that these women won't let their daughters marry as children. Child marriage could cease to exist with their generation.

Today, we have the opportu-nity to enshrine such a global pledge to end child marriage.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), international targets set at the turn of the century, proved it was possible to think, and to act, on the largest of scales: halving extreme poverty, halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education are some of its objectives, all by the target date of 2015. Unlike many international commitments, the MDGs are still remembered years later, and helped galvanise unprecedented efforts by governments.
But this progress will be stunted if we fail to address injustices as staggering, persistent and widespread as child marriage. As our leaders begin the process of preparing new development goals to succeed the MDGs, the persistence of child marriage should be seen as one of the major barriers to the well-being of our human family.

Too often, child marriage is justified on the basis of custom or tradition. While traditions often serve to bind societies together, we also want to point out that traditions are man-made. If we learn that they are harmful, we should change them.

In our travels as Elders - a group of independent leaders working for peace, justice and human rights - in Asia and Africa, we have met brave girls and boys who do not hesitate to stand up to tradition and say no to child marriage. In Bihar, a state where nearly 70% of girls marry before they turn 18 (contrary to national law), we met admirable young people who were signing pledges not to marry before 18. In Amhara, a region in northern Ethiopia, where the most common age for a girl to marry is 12, we visited girls who participated in workshops to discuss collectively the benefits of ending child marriage.

These meetings convinced us that there is a real need to connect groups around the world, enable them to work together and help to end this practice. This led to the creation, last year, of Girls Not Brides, a global partnership of organisations dedicated to stopping the practice, with a membership now growing in the hundreds.

We believe that an international consensus on the need to end child marriage is within sight. When we created Girls Not Brides in 2011, we committed to ending child marriage in one generation. Why not, then, pledge the elimination of this harmful practice by 2030?

Development targets to improve global health, education and gender equality would also be tackled by a pledge to end this devastating practice. And generation after generation, girls would be able to fulfil their potential and bless their daughters to do the same.
On this inaugural Day of the Girl, we call on the international community to promise a different life to those girls - a life of their choosing.

Ela Bhatt is the founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association, India, and Desmond Tutu is archbishop emeritus of Cape Town and a Nobel peace prize laureate.

PLUG THE LOOPHOLES IN THE CHILDREN’S ACT

Published in the NEW VISION, Kampala, Monday, September 24, 2012. Pg 16.

 By Caroline Sanyu Nakalyango

In July, I wrote an article entitled: What is the plight of child mothers? In it, I expressed concern about the worrying number of girls getting pregnant in primary schools.

According to the Ugandan Annual Crime and Traffic/Road Safety Report 2011, a total of 7,690 cases of defilement were reported in 2011. However, only 3,836 suspects were arrested and taken to court. This implies that over 50% of defilement cases were dropped.

Parents negotiate with defilers of their children for bride price. It is absurd these parents value wealth and property more than their children’s health and lives.

Last week, a story about a 12-year -old mother was published. It is a pity that this girl was defiled by a 24 –year-old man who in turn gave the girl’s father a cow to silence the crime.

If this girl was not discovered by the community, she would either have lost her life while delivering or the baby’s since she is too young to have a normal birth. This is because her parents had decided to keep the child’s pregnancy a secret. The girl’s life was rescued by the community and indeed she is one in a million. Many of her kind have not been so lucky and have lost their lives just because their parents chose to negotiate with their tormentors.

A number of girls have been defiled and infected with HIV/AIDS and other STIs. This is because their parents decide to side with criminals. As a result most of the victims have damaged their uterus and this puts them at a risk of becoming barren for the rest of their lives.

Defilement is the biggest form of child sexual abuse and there is urgent need to exterminate this vice.

The Children’s Act Cap 59 states the rights of children but does not mention what has to be done for children that have been abused. These gaps have to be filled so as for the law to be more felt. This way our children will be less abused. Parents should not negotiate with defilers as they compromise their children’s health. The community should always report cases of child abuse to the authorities.

FIGHT CHILD MARRIAGES

PUBLISHED IN THE NEW VISION, MONDAY, July 2, 2012
CAROLINE SANYU NAKALYANGO JOY FOR CHILDREN UGANDA



The New Vision, Thursday, June, 28, 2012 ran a story urging parents to support the Government campaign against child labour. This is evident in Kiryandongo and Masindi districts where children at primary school level are being employed as labourers on the tobacco fields. Child labour is a hindrance to children’s education as they almost become comfortable with the little wages they get from the tobacco field owners hence totally give up on Education. Often time’s children have been exposed to the labour market even as early as 13 years. Young girls are brought from the rural areas to come and work as nannies and house keepers in the city. You find a child of school going age taking care of a toddler at home. It is no news that some of these children are being sexually harassed by their employers who in turn pay them some little money for their silence. This is how some of these children are introduced to prostitution hence increasing the spread of HIV. Recently in New Vision a catholic priest defiled a girl who occasionally had been sent by her parents to help the priest with domestic work. Another story is that of Judith, a 14 year old who was about to be defiled by her boss but managed to fight him off and obviously she lost her job at the man’s residence. Young boys too are exploited and work on empty stomachs. After a heavy day’s work, they go away without a single payment. Children that are employed in tobacco‐growing areas are in jeopardy of adopting the vice of smocking which will pilot to poor health in future. Smocking leads to cancer which is a very dangerous disease and hard to be treated. The fact that children are exposed to the labour market reduces their need to be in school as they see it a waste of time. This alone will hinder the government programmes from progressing. Especially on the Education for all children in the country. Parents are therefore called upon to support the government campaign against child labour. They should not send their children to work especially girls as they stand a high chance of being defiled, getting pregnant and infected with HIV/AIDS that has no cure‐Children should be encouraged by their parents to go to school after all education at both primary and secondary level is free to all children in Uganda. In this way they are able to attain basic education and plan for a better future with the knowledge and skills they attain from school. The country needs very intelligent people that can plan for its development. This can not be achieved if children of the nation are Uneducated, exploited as child labourers on plantation farms and are sexually abused by their employers who infect them with the Pandemic.

PUBLISHED IN THE NEW VISION, Tuesday, July 10, 2012

WHAT IS THE PLIGHT OF CHILD MOTHERS

Reference to the article published in New vision, Monday, June25, 2012, the number of girls getting pregnant in primary schools is shooting up and at a very fast rate. Over 50 pupils are being impregnated in Lamwo district per term. This is not something to go dancing and jubilating about. It simply means the future of our children is unpredictable which is so saddening. In 2008, there were 16 million births to mothers aged 15-19 years, representing 11% of all births worldwide. It should be noted that these girls are defiled and remain silent as their offenders threaten to kill them. What is the future of these girls? Who are their offenders? What has been done to these lawbreakers who defile these girls? All these questions remain unanswered. Community should be alert and report incidences of defilement and forced marriages to the law enforcement officers. The girl child should not be abused and the offender goes away as a free man. Parents should support the government in the implementation of the law. On several occasions parents have tried to cover up for such criminals in return for simple gifts like; sugar, salt and bread. This reduces on the law efficiency. They mind more on who is to marry their daughter rather than worrying about the health of the man who has defiled her. So as way forward parents should not negotiate with these defilers so that the law can take its course on them. According to the Penal Code Act Cap 120(1), any person who performs a sexual act with one below the age of eighteen years, commits a felony known as defilement and is on conviction liable to life imprisonment. It’s further stated in subsection (4) where the offender is a parent or relative or guardian or is infected with the Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV) commits a felony called aggravated defilement and is, on conviction by the High Court, to suffer death. It is however questionable if all these men that get these girls pregnant are followed up and if they serve their punishment. Therefore, a girl child must be highly protected in the community. This is due to the fact that she is more vulnerable to defilement.

PUBLISHED IN THE SUNDAY VISION, 1 July, 2012


http://joyforchildren.org/plightofchildmothers.html

Sacrificing kids does not create wealth

Dear Editor, Witch doctors perform the ritual of child sacrifice for profit. They believe that sacrificing human beings creates lots of wealth! Traditional leaders and healers have often denied child sacrifice to be Ugandan culture. They attribute it to the world’s global village that has seen us copying practices from other cultures. The Universal Declation of Human Rights Article 3 states that every one has a right to life, liberty and security of person. Sacrificing children automatically deprives them of their right to life. Many times we have heard of children gone missing only to discover their mutilated bodies after a few days. At the moment, Godfrey Kato Kajubi is a suspect on trail accused of murdering a 12 year old boy who was a pupil of Kayugi primary school in Masaka District on October 27th 2008. There are many other cases but they are voiceless as it is so difficult for the under privileged to get justice in court. Most times, the rich always get away as free men after sacrificing innocent children.   Many bodies of children have been found mutilated. The sight is so ghastly and pathetic and one wonders what relationship there is between sacrificing humans and wealth! There is certainly no relationship between the two and it is high time people stopped the crime of taking away young people’s innocent lives. They end up reaping misery instead of wealth from their crimes. Article 3 International Convention on the rights of the child states that in all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative bodies, the best interest of the child shall be a primary consideration. This includes protection of children and care which is necessary for their well -being.   Basing on this, parents shouldn’t send their children to shops in the night as they can be kidnapped since such crimes as child sacrifice and kidnapping are mostly done at dusk. Parents should advise children not to befriend strangers and not to take gifts from people they don’t know. Teachers shouldn’t accept anyone without permission from the child’s parents to pick them from school. Children too should keep in groups especially when going to or are from school.

Wait for the matoke to ripen: Encouraging communities to delay early marriage in Uganda

Moses Ntenga of Joy for Children blogs about the unique challenges in addressing child marriage in Uganda and argues that changing negative attitudes towards schooling and education will go a long way to reducing the practice.


By Moses Ntenga, Founder and Executive Director, Joy for Children Uganda



I’ve been working to defend children’s rights since way back. Growing up in rural Uganda I was always aware that many of my friends were denied the chance to fulfil their potential.



Eventually you find that very few friends you started school with complete it with you, and when you look back and think why, you realise it is often because their rights weren’t fulfilled – or protected.



Perhaps they had parents who weren’t concerned about their education, or perhaps they had to leave school to help at home, to carry food to market, or to look after younger siblings. Perhaps violence had forced them to flee their town or village or perhaps early marriage forced girls to abandon schoolwork for housework.



Violence, poverty and displacement: What causes early marriage in Uganda?



Early marriage is a widespread problem in Uganda. UNICEF estimates that 46percent of women aged 20-24 years old were married before they were 18. That is much higher than the African average of 34percent.



Poverty, of course, perpetuates the practice. Families often choose to marry off their daughter off in exchange for goats or cows. One Frisian cow is worth about 2 million Ugandan shillings – around 800 US dollars – so families of few means make a financial calculation about their daughter and their family’s security.



But in Uganda we also face particular circumstances that contribute to high rates of early marriage. Years of conflict in the north of the country saw the region’s entire social system dismantled and tens of thousands of people forced to flee their homes and seek refuge in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs)



Life in the camps can be dangerous, particularly for young women. Many parents choose to marry off their daughters believing that a husband will keep their daughters safe. There is little schooling in the camps too, which leaves girls with few options but marriage.



Conditions in the camps are difficult, with whole families forced to live in temporary shelters often with no more than one room. Sharing a room with adults means that little is private and girls are exposed to sexual activity from an early age and it is not uncommon to see girls fall pregnant at 13, 14 or 15 years old.



In Uganda we have a saying that “If the matoke (banana) is not mature enough, it will not ripen”. It is often said that a girl would not fall pregnant if her body was not ready. If she is pregnant, we are told, her body is ready for childbearing and she is ready for marriage too.



This attitude helps to explain why the practice of child marriage is so prevalent not only in the camps, but throughout Uganda. Girls are seen principally as child bearers or marriage material.



Asking communities what is, and what ought to be



At Joy for Children, we’re working closely with communities – both within the IDP camps and beyond – to try to change these attitudes. It’s not a matter of finger-pointing, but of winning hearts and minds first.



We start by trying to raise awareness of the impact that early marriage and early pregnancy can have on girls by, for example, painting community murals or working with the local media to air radio programmes about the issue. We don’t g into communities to cause friction but to ha constructive engagement with people to understand what is good or right for their ch I am convinced that very few parents would give away their young daughters in marriage if they knew of the side o ve a ildren. Murals painted by Joy for Children in a rural Ugandan effects. community



We then work closely with community leaders or role models to inform them of the impact of the practice. We work out what the community already knows, we add to their knowledge and we ask them what they think needs to be done, to define the difference between what is, and what ought to be.



Bringing together small groups of five or six people, we ask them some pretty tough questions: do you want to see your children married at an early age and their health damaged forever? Do you want to have girls who, because they dropped out of school so young, are unable to contribute to her family’s security and prosperity? It helps to point to our own and international laws to show them how the international community looks at the child; we find that it increases their own sense of responsibility towards the children in their community.



Our work is changing attitudes, and it is having a chain effect. The community role models that we train are encouraged to identify ten respected people in their community with a good track record of caring for children. They meet regularly to discuss issues relating to children in their community and are able to provide guidance and counselling to child victims of harmful practices, including early marriage. We’re continually asked to provide more training and more information and it is inspiring to see each participant become committed to the cause of children’s rights.



Adopting a ‘good school’ model



We’re also keen to make school a more appealing option for girls and their families. All toooften girls drop out of school because the education they receive is poor and their parents see little benefit to continuing their schooling.



We want to keep children in school and to broaden their perspective. An education will enable children to read posters, understand murals and listen to the radio in English. We believe that good schooling will help girls to look at other factors surrounding marriage: “beyond cooking for my husband and bearing children, how will I better raise my children?”



That’s why we’ve launched a participation programme to create schools that parents want to see, that children are proud of and where teachers want to teach. We ask all involved at a school to tell us what a good school should be like. Few talk to us about the buildings or the beauty of the uniforms. Instead they tell us that a good school should be one where the teachers respect children, where administrators respond to children and where parents are encouraged to engage with teachers – and where teachers understand them.



We work closely with schools to implement the findings and organise a regular ‘Day of Child Participation’ where children sing songs, perform plays or recite poems about their schools and what needs to be done. We encourage the parents to join their children in making posters, painting murals and planting flowers within the school. If children don’t have a sense of ownership over their school, they won’t attend, even if their parents insist.



Good schooling will help us to show girls and their parents that there are alternatives to early marriage. Perhaps over time, too, it will also help girls to see that they have potential and will provide them with the skills to fulfil it. Perhaps one day our saying about the matoke will come to have a different meaning: that only when children have completed their education are they mature enough or ready for a fruitful life, let alone marriage.



To find out more about Joy for Children and its work, visit www.joyforchildren.org



Child marriage in Uganda



Rate of child marriage: 46% (compared to the African average of 34%)

Global ranking: Uganda has the 15th highest prevalence rate of child marriage in the world.

Rate of child marriage in urban areas: 27%

Rate of child marriage in rural areas: 52% Source: UNICEF,

The State of the World’s Children, 2012

CHILDREN SHOULD BE NURTURED IN A VIOLENT-FREE ENVIRONMENT.

Published in Daily Monitor, Kampala, Tuesday, September 18, 2012



Yesterday, the Daily monitor published a story about a jilted husband who shifted his frustration to daughter and cut her deep on the head just because his wife had sexually starved him for three months. It is becoming common these days to read in the press reports about children who are being abused daily.

We always find stories about young girls defiled by their biological fathers or relatives; Children starved to death, children sacrificed; children engaging in child labour; children denied a right to education; children burnt to ashes in their family houses, schools,etc. The list of crimes being committed against children is endless.

On average, 16 girls are reportedly defiled everyday country wide. Many girls have dropped out of school due to pregnancies arising from defilement. However most of their tormentors are not always followed up due to corruption and negligence by some parents.

Recently, a girl was reportedly burnt while roasting maize. It is a great pity that this happened due to the rivalry between the co-wives so she was a victim of circumstances. Children often suffer at the expense of their parents and this has to stop. According to statistics at Nakasongola Police station, a total of 100 underage girls have been defiled this year in the district. This is absurd. It is not something we should jubilate about. This should be cause for concern not only to the parents and children, but also to the entire country.

A girl child’s life is at stake and there is great need to safe-guard them from all forms of abuse. We should realise that a girl-child is the most vulnerable human being in any community. It is sad that when some parents cannot afford to provide their children with basic necessities such as food, clothing and medical care, they often turn their frustration to the children. Parents should avoid involving children in their frustrations.

It is most important that parents use family planning methods to enable them give birth to children they can best look after. Alternatively, they should work harder to ensure that they are in position to provide for their family requirements. It is the responsibility of parents to protect and provide wholly for their children.

Child abuse should be eliminated and children should be allowed to enjoy all their rights. People who inflict pain on children should be punished. It is important that children are allowed to live in an environment which is free of violence.

Caroline Sanyu Nakalyango,

Communications officer at Joy for Children Uganda

info@joyforchildren.org