Child Marriage: The theft of innocence
- youthconvoorg
- Oct 26, 2021
- 3 min read

How about we stroll in the past a little? The thought that this topic was not an area of discussion in the past fifty years intrigues me but here we are. Time bought us positive change and that is a win for all of us.
The World Health Organization defines child marriage as any formal or informal union between a child under the age of eighteen and an adult or another child. Child abuse on the other hand is the physical, emotional or sexual mistreatment of children.
The global prevalence of child marriages has gone down significantly in the past years from one in four a decade ago to approximately one in five today. Sadly, the practice remains widespread in the world at large. Before the COVID 19 pandemic, the number of girls that were expected to get married in the next decade was tagged at a hundred million but the coming of the pandemic increased that number by a further ten million, thus exacerbating everything that is undesirable about this issue. Child marriages are not uncommon to the Zimbabwean society especially in the rural areas. Child marriages are mainly because of gender inequality in societies as mainly it is the girl child that is sent off for marriage before the time they turn eighteen.
The root causes of this problem of child marriages cannot be localized as they vary across different cultures, countries and depend on the economic status of a society in general. Some families marry off their daughters to reduce their economic burden or simply to earn income. Norms and stereotypes around gender roles have upheld this practice for a prolonged time. Other socio economic risks like pregnancy outside of marriage have also upheld child marriage as a practice.
The prevalence of child marriage is higher in girls as compared to boys. The prevalence of child marriage in boys is only one sixth of that of girls. Once children are married off at a tender age, they are robbed of their childhood. They are robbed of the chance to grow stage by stage having adults assisting them in making decisions in life instead they are made precocious adults, having to manage problems and tasks that are meant for grownups.
Marriages that have a child as one of the parties of the union are characterized by gender-based violence and the chances of early divorce are imminent. This comes about because the child will not have a voice in the marriage, as they will be treated much like an object or tool for satisfaction, labor and entertainment and less of a spouse considering the huge age difference that child brides have with their husbands. Whenever they try to their view or suggest something that contradicts their better half, they will be putting themselves at risk of being aggressively opposed and in most cases bashed.
Furthermore, child marriages are a threat to the health and life of the child brides. Children are easily stressed mentally by the duties of wives they take up. If the relationship is abusive which is not uncommon, they are subjected to emotional, physical and sexual abuse. All those forms of abuse without a doubt debilitate their mental and physical health. Most children caught by this web of child matrimony are deprived of proper health care as this usually happens in the apostolic sects, which do not believe in modern and professional health systems.
Child marriages have costed many lives of young girls largely during labor. During adolescence, most female bodies will still be in the process of development to suit the dimensions and requirements necessary for conception and delivery hence young girls have died due to pregnancy and delivery complications. This is very sad.
Problems like these truly need a reverse mechanism when considering fixing them or at least minimizing their impact. We need to work starting by addressing the push factors thus eliminating the problem all together.

It is good to hear that in 2016, UNICEF, together with UNFPA, launched the Global Programme to End Child Marriage. Empowering young girls at risk of marriage or already in union, the programme has reached more than 12 million adolescent girls with life-skills training and school attendance support since 2016. Over 105 million people, including key community influencers, have also engaged in dialogue and communication campaigns to support adolescent girls, or other efforts to end child marriage.
We all need to educate members of our communities of the dangers of child marriages, make them understand and provide solutions to eradicate this problem preferably by the year 2030, as called for by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
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