Story By: Rahamatu-Lahi Zakaria || Sanatu Zambang
National Campaigns Coordinator for World Vision Ghana on End Child Marriage Now, Madam Barbara Asare has describe the menace of Child marriage of contributing to the cycle of poverty among families in the northern region who engage in the practice. She made this statement during a high level stakeholder consortium dialogue at Gushegu organized by World Vision International Ghana in partnership with Savannah Women Integrated Development on the theme “Ending child trafficking and violence against children: The role of traditional and religious leaders”.
She said, having this kind of dialogue was necessary as it would help spread the word and also keep the young girls in school to help reduce the pervasiveness of poverty in the municipality. Madam Sakina Salifu, Girls Education Officer at the Gushegu Municipal Education Directorate in her presentation revealed about 309 girls failed to return to school after schools were closed during the COVID-19 lockdown.
This she says was due to the fact that, most of the girls were either given out in marriage or engaged in other economic activities. The figures was from a survey conducted by her department which showed that, about some 119 primary school girls, 155 Junior High School girls and 35 Senior High School girls could not return to the classroom after the COVID-19 lockdown.
Hajia Alima Sagito -Saeed, Executive Director of SWIDA-GH who moderated the event said the dialogue is meant to take solutions and ideas from stakeholders to on ending child marriage and child trafficking in the municipality. According to Hajia Halima, there is an urgent need to deliberate among key stakeholders on the strategic measures to adopt in getting actions points to addressing the needs of girls in the area because of the reported cases of child marriage and child trafficking in the area.
The municipality recorded 19 child trafficking cases and other forms of child abuse Miss Lydia Wumbei, a victim of child marriage narrated her ordeal and the plight of other victims and pressed the stakeholders to urgently come out with measures that would better protect girls against child marriages and other forms of abuse. Participants including traditional leaders, religions leaders and amongst other pledge their support in ending child trafficking and all forms of child abuse in the municipality to guarantee and protect the rights of the girl child
