Continue the fight against child marriages

If societal effort is not encouraged, many will continue to either practice or simply look the other way when they chance upon perpetrators claiming it is none of their business.

Yesterday, we published a story of  how police in Butaleja District arrested a mother for allegedly marrying off her 15-year-old daughter. According to the story, police reports showed that the mother conspired with the husband currently on the run-  to surrender their daughter to a 38-year-old Ali Guloba, a resident of Mwanswa Village, Busabi Town Council in Butaleja District for marriage in exchange for Shs1 million. (See Daily Monitor April 28, “Mother arrested over marrying off underage daughter for Shs1m”)

 As is highlighted in that story, Section 133 of the penal code sets a five-year prison sentence as a penalty for persons involved in aiding defilement and available district data indicates that about 5,264 girls aged 10-19 were impregnated in 2019 and 2020 in Butaleja.

Such arrests are a good step in the long walk to elimination of child marriage in Uganda. The enablers of this sordid practice which includes parents as key players must be held to account for their poor choices that go on to have lifelong consequences for the victims.

According to Unicef, “Uganda has the 16th highest prevalence of child marriage in the world, and 10th highest absolute number of child brides totaling to an estimated four million and statistics indicate that 34 per cent of women are married before the age of 18 and 7.3 per cent before the age of 15. It is home to  five million child brides. Of these, 1.3 million married before age 15.”

The two year school lockdown occasioned by Covid-19 simply exacerbated the situation with many girls who were now out of school being forced into marriages for various reasons such as primitive cultural traditions but mainly financial reasons where the victims are exchanged for money. 

The practice can only be curbed with high levels of sensitization on the dangers of early and forced marriages and encouraging all members of society to work together to stop it.

If societal effort is not encouraged, many will continue to either practice or simply look the other way when they chance upon perpetrators claiming it is none of their business. If this is to end, perpetrators must be punished without fear or favour regardless of their standing in society.

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