SPOTTING a visibly oversized dress that hides a protruding tummy, Lorna (not her real name) joins the long queue of women visiting a local health centre in rural Wedza for maternity check-ups.
BY JAIROS SAUNYAMA
Judging by her looks, she is in her early teens and should be in school.
But things get worse when the young mother-to-be fails to produce a birth certificate so that she can be registered at the clinic.
“I do not have the birth certificate, but I am 13 years old. My mother told me before she died that the birth particulars were burnt after our hut caught fire. I got married last year and my husband said he would assist me in securing a birth certificate,” Lorna says.
She is one of the many young girls in the country that have fallen prey to child marriages, with some perpetrators taking advantage of unavailability of birth certificates.
Birth registration can play a crucial role in fighting child marriages by scaring away would-be offenders.
The availability of birth registrations also helps people register major life events, including deaths, marriages, adoptions and births.
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Justice for Children Trust director, Caleb Mutandwa, says without birth certificates, children can lie to protect the offenders.
“Without a birth certificate, it is difficult, if not impossible, to prove the child’s age. Children forced by their parents or guardians can lie about age to protect the offender. Efforts to rescue the child and the criminal justice system can be defeated without a birth certificate. The offender may not be successfully prosecuted for having sexual intercourse with a young person because there will be need to prove age,” he says.
“The alternative for proving that age is estimation is expensive to many victims and survivors of child marriage and their parents. Birth registration is also critical to the issue of child marriage because a birth certificate can open the door to the child enjoying other rights like education, health, social assistance.
“It is well known that children denied of services such as education are more likely to end up in child marriage. It is, therefore, critical to talk of birth registration when trying to find solutions of child marriage.”
The government is being urged to decentralise registration services and ensure they have birth records as an effective move to end child marriages in Zimbabwe.
“Birth registration is one of the most fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution. Every child should be registered and obtain a birth certificate. Communities must value the child’s birth certificate and seek one as soon as a child is born. They should not wait until a child starts school to then seek to register,” Mutandwa says.
“The government must continue decentralising the process of birth registration and also educate communities on the importance of birth certificates. We encourage the Registrar-General to engage in media campaigns to educate communities of the importance of birth registration and the requirements for one to obtain a birth certificate for a child in different scenarios.”
In countries such as Bangladesh, the law requires parents to register births within 45 days.
There is a penalty, $65, for delayed registration, a move that has seen parents and guardians securing the vital document in time.
As the battle to fight child marriages intensifies in that Asian country, the government has an effective online registration to make it easy for authorities to get an authentic date if need arises.
Zimbabwe National Council for the Welfare of Children programmes manager, Maxim Murungweni says birth registration is a critical issue and that government needs to employ significant measures in arresting the problem.
“Birth registration remains a critical challenge in Zimbabwe. Significant measures are, therefore needed to attain universal birth registration in Zimbabwe. Perpetrators of child marriages are getting away with it, as most of the victims (children) do not have birth certificates to prove that the victim is less than 18 years. As such, the perpetrators always argue that the victims are adults. The birth certificate is the only legitimate document that can be used to verify the age of the victim,” he says.
“In some instances, families collude to hide the child’s birth certificate so that the age of the child cannot be verified. To make matters worse, the only other way to prove the child’s age is using age estimation at the hospital, but this is costly and most victims cannot afford. Without proof of age, the perpetrators are set free. This has seen most of the child marriage cases being dismissed.”
Murungweni says although the suggestion that all traditional leaders should register marriages within their jurisdictions will go a long way in the fight against child marriages, the lack of birth certificates will hamper efforts to determine the age of the child before authorising the marriage.
“The traditional leaders and the courts will need birth certificates to determine the age of those getting married, in the case that one of the partners is under 18 then the marriage will not be sanctioned, but all this will be difficult when there are no such documents,” he says.
A comparison of the 2005-2006 Zimbabwe Demographic Health Survey, with its successor in 2010-2011, revealed that the percentage of children under the age of five, whose births were registered, has dropped sharply from 74% to 49%.
In 2008, the birth registration rate for Zimbabwe was pegged at an overall 42% (56% urban areas and 35% for rural areas).
Children in institutions still lack birth registration, with latest figures showing that the birth registration rate for children under five years is 32,3%.
Recently, Harare West legislator, Jessie Majome, who is also the Zimbabwe national chairperson for Parliamentarians for Global Action — a group formed to combat child marriages and forced marriages — presented the draft amendments to laws addressing child marriage to Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa .
The draft seeks to amend the Births and Deaths Registration, Children’s Act and Marriage Act, among others.
According to law experts, the birth registration act is unconstitutional, as its contents present hurdles for those wishing to get documents for a child born out of wedlock.
For now, Lorna still remains the second wife to her husband, and interested parties cannot report the matter to the police, since she does not have a birth certificate.
Zimbabwe joined the AU Campaign to end child marriages in mid-2015.
The Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community Development ministry, with support from the United Nations Children’s Fund, United Nations Women, United Nations Population Fund, and Child Rights and Women’s Rights Coalitions, has been working on a national action plan to end child marriages and its related communication for development activities.
The Constitutional Court ruling of January 2016 has been an impetus to move the agenda forward.
All these efforts are part of the global campaign to end child marriages.
