Forced, early marriages still a major concern - Cavaye Yeguie

The speaker of the National Assembly, Cavaye Yeguie Djibril has stated that despite efforts made by government and development partners to stem forced and early child marriages, the phenomenon remains a major concern in the country.

Cavaye was speaking as he addressed 180 junior parliamentarians drawn from the 10 regions of Cameroon during the 17th edition of children parliament. The session was part of the commemorative activities to mark the 25th edition of the African day of the child.

According to Cavaye, government is relentlessly working to protect and promote all rights accorded to children in the country. He called on all stakeholders to pull efforts in order to build a brighter future for the children whom he referred to as the leaders of tomorrow.

“A UNICEF report at the London ‘Girls summit 2014’, estimates that more than 700million of married women in the world got married when they were still children and of that figure, 1/3 got married before the age of 15 and close to half forced marriages took place in South Asia,” the Minister of Social Affairs disclosed at the session.

The same UNICEF report states that the rate of early marriages is high in West and Central Africa; with five countries in the sub region recording 52% with some peaks situated between 72 and 77%.

UNICEF noted in the said report that child marriages constitute a widespread form of sexual maltreatment and exploitation of girls. It likened the phenomenon to a contemporary form of slavery and slave trade.

Meanwhile, according to a 2011 statistics on Cameroon, 17% of women got married at ages below 15, while six percent of men did so below 18years, and the average marriage years in some regions of the country is 15.9%. “Child marriage is a violation of the human rights of girls and boys.” States UNICEF.

‘This violation has deep damaging repercussions on the physical, intellectual, psychological and emotional aspects of children,” it stated. It was also observed that child marriage has disastrous health consequences with complicated clinical problems such as obstetric fistulas for girls.

Health experts attribute a majority of child and maternal deaths to this practice. According to UNICEF, girls of less than18years face double risk of death more than women of 20 to 30years during pregnancy or child delivery.