GHANA: SURVEY RESPONSE ON CHILD MARRIAGE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 ACCRA 000550

SIPDIS

PLEASE PASS TO L KHADIAGALA IN G/IWI

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: ECON ELAB GH KWMN PGOV PHUM SCUL SOCI
SUBJECT: GHANA: SURVEY RESPONSE ON CHILD MARRIAGE

REF: SECSTATE 36341


1. This message is post's response to reftel, which requested
information about the prevalence and adverse effects of child
marriage in Ghana.

Legal Age of Marriage
--------------


2. Under Ghana's Children's Act, the legal age required to
marry is 18 for both girls and boys. There is no lower legal
age for marriage permitted with parental consent. However,
many births and marriages are not registered, which often
makes it difficult to enforce the law. The ages of brides
often cannot be proven. Moreover, the vast majority of
Ghanaian couples form and celebrate their unions through
traditional rites. They then live together, recognized as
married couples within their communities without any legal
recognition. Because these unions are not registered, they
are not easily captured in statistics and it is difficult for
the government to intervene to prevent child marriage in
these cases.

Scope of Child Marriage Problem
--------------


3. Child marriage is a problem in Ghana, but its magnitude
is unknown as no reliable statistics exist to measure its
overall prevalence or its concentration among various ethnic
groups. According to Ghana's Ministry of Women and
Children's Affairs, no government entity currently tracks the
statistical incidence of child marriage in Ghana. UNICEF's
website (www.unicef.org) cites statistics gathered between
1998 and 2003 to report that 25 percent of children in Ghana
were subject to child marriages, with a higher incidence in
urban areas. However, the organization's local office
disavows these numbers. A UNICEF Ghana official told us these
numbers appeared inflated and at odds with the heavier
concentration of child marriages in more rural areas noted by
UNICEF's own Child Protection Teams. The only organization
known to have documented actual cases is the Commission on
Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ)'s Northern
Region office, which last year received information about 125
cases of forced marriages, most of which involved girls
between 15 and 18 years old.


4. While many child protection experts believe child
marriages are concentrated in the rural north of Ghana, some
experts indicate the problem is more geographically
dispersed. In recent years, UNICEF and CHRAJ officials have
witnessed child marriages in seven of the Northern Region's
13 districts, three of the four districts in the Upper East
Region, and one of the four districts in the Upper West
Region. The Women and Juvenile Unit of the Ghana Police has
also received cases in areas of the Brong Ahafo and Ashanti
Regions bordering on the Northern Region. Children's Rights
International's Kofi Appiah knew of child marriages in
coastal districts and districts close to the Volta River and
Lake Volta such as the Ada area of the Greater Accra Region,
Elmina in the Central Region, and the Yilo Krobo District of
the Eastern Region.


5. Poverty, cultural traditions and religious beliefs all
contribute to the practice of child marriage in Ghana. In the
majority of forced marriages, parents pledge to marry
daughters against their will. In some cases, parents may
resort to marrying their daughters early to avoid
out-of-wedlock pregnancies, according to a CHRAJ contact.
However, the prevailing motive is economic. International
Labor Organization/Ghana officials know of instances in which
young men who could not afford dowries simply exchanged
younger sisters. Additionally, Children's Rights
International points to two circumstances areas in which
child labor frequently leads to child marriages. In fishing
communities, the young girls who sell fish often elope with
the men who employ them. Young girls who serve as domestic
help also may find themselves taken as wives by the men they
serve.


6. Despite the strong economic motive behind child
marriages, culture and religion also are important
contributing factors. In the Upper West, young girls commonly
elope on market days with their pre-selected mates. In this
cultural tradition, men display their bravery by stealing
away the brides without the parents' knowledge. Among the
Konkomba ethnic group of the Northern Region, daughter
exchanges, pledges of brides at birth and inheritance of a
deceased husband's wife are believed to promote social
cohesion. Traditional rulers throughout Ghana routinely marry
younger wives when they assume the throne (or stool). Cases
have been reported in which these rulers have abused this
practice to take an underage bride.


7. Child marriages in Ghana threaten gender parity in
education and the associated development that takes place in
communities when girls are permitted to complete school.
Children's rights activists say these marriages also lead to
early pregnancies, early terminations and the breakdown of
families because these marriages are less likely to endure.

USG-Funded Initiatives
--------------


8. Post's Democracy and Human Rights Fund (DHRF) funded four
workshops this year organized by The Islamic Foundation for
Peace and Development (IFPD). IFPD's program educates 300
women and 1,000 students within the various Muslim
communities of Greater Accra to promote school attendance and
prevent child marriages. It has the support of Ghana's Muslim
leadership and aims to influence not only the students, but
also Muslim religious leaders who have endorsed child
marriages in the past.


9. USAID/Ghana does not have programs which directly address
child marriage. USAID/Ghana's education program has an
overall goal of improving access to and the quality of
primary education in Ghana. This includes a focus on
improving educational opportunities for girls in the poor
northern region of Ghana. USAID will support scholarships
for girls and its implementing partner will be establishing
community-managed schools in rural areas with no appropriate
schools. The USAID/Ghana Safe Schools program seeks to
create a safe environment to reduce gender violence and
improve both education and health for school children. While
not specifically targeting child marriage, these USAID
education programs should have some impact on reducing the
incidence of child marriage.

Priorities for Future Intervention
--------------


10. The Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs and several
children's rights organizations say they need baseline data
on the prevalence of child marriage and its causes to develop
more effective strategies to combat it. Public awareness and
grassroots campaigns, particularly in the three Northern
regions, may help to educate communities on how child
marriage hinders development and to win over traditional
leaders. (UNICEF's Child Protection Teams and CHRAJ have
carried out grassroots campaigns to educate villagers and
traditional rulers about the legal age to marry and to
discourage child marriages.) Victim assistance programs
would liberate and provide economic assistance to children
who have been forced into marriages.


YATES