Workshop against child marriages held

Tamale, Dec. 16, GNA - Strategic Communication Africa Limited (Stratcomm), a communications consulting company, has organized a days' sensitization workshop for some communities in the Northern Region.

The meeting, funded by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), was part of a project being undertaken to address issues of child marriages in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions.

Mr Charles Mensah, Programmes Officer of Stratcomm, said the workshop was aimed at soliciting views on the concerns of child marriage and solutions to mitigate the menace.

He said child marriage occurs when a person below the age of 18 gets married either with or without consent of the parent.

Mr Mensah said child marriage occurs more frequently among the least educated rural poor than the educated and that women aged 20-24 in rural areas were three times likely to get married than their urban counterparts.

He said many communities would benefit from the project which would ensure that child marriages were reduced to enable children of school going age to be retained in school.

He said research conducted by the UNFPA revealed that many children were getting married in some parts of the country instead of developing themselves saying human resource was significant to the socio-economic development of the country.

He said many of the child marriages occurred in the northern parts of the country noting that the high rate of child marriages could have been caused by poverty.

Mr Mensah said the second phase of the project would adopt community sensitization and social marketing approaches to help alter certain preconceived notions held by some adults and children.

GNA