PROMINENT Zimbabwean women’s rights activist and secretary-general of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), Nyaradzai Gumbonzvanda, has claimed that more than 39 000 underage girls were being forced into marriages with older men each day throughout the world.
by NQOBILE BHEBHE
Gumbonzvanda told more than 400 guests drawn from 20 countries attending a psycho-social support forum in Victoria Falls yesterday that the problem of child marriages was not peculiar to African countries.
“Forced and child marriages are multi-dimensional and we should have clear conversations on such issues,” she said.
“About 39 000 girls are married each day worldwide and 15 million men are making decisions to rape and violate girls and are supported and encouraged by other adults.
“Adults are responsible for abusing our girls. The whole concept of child marriages is cloaked under the notion of love, care and protection, but this is a 40-year-old man telling a 15-year-old.”
The summit is running under the theme Love, Care and Protection. From Infancy to adolescence.
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World YWCA, is a movement of women working for social and economic change around the world. It advocates for young women’s leadership, peace, justice, human rights and sustainable development, both on grassroots and global levels.
Although Gumbonzvanda said education was key in ending child marriages, she expressed concern that there was little child psycho-social support offered to abused girls.
“What happens to the children of child brides? They are randomly divorced and that perpetuates poverty.
“We have baskets of good policies that stand against child marriages but there is lack of commitment in implementing them,” she said.
Meanwhile, various youth groups attending the meeting rapped their respective governments for being less committed to implementing and enforcing internationally-agreed policies to eradicate the scourge of child marriages.
