The United Nations has shown strong disapproval for the practice of child marriage in Zimbabwe following the death of a 14-year-old girl after she gave birth at a church shrine.
The incident has caused outrage among citizens and rights activists as it evidently portrays the practice of child marriage within Zimbabwe’s apostolic churches, which also allows polygamy.
The government has traditionally turned a blind eye to the practice of child marriage. Zimbabwe is said to have two sets of marriage laws, the Marriage Act and Customary Marriages Act. Neither law gives a minimum age for marriage consent, while the customary law allows polygamy.
A new marriages bill that is before parliament for debate seeks to synchronise the laws, ban marriage of anyone below 18 years and prosecute anyone involved in the marriage of a minor.
The U.N. in Zimbabwe said in a statement that it “notes with deep concern and condemns strongly” the circumstances leading to the death of Memory Machaya, the 14-year-old girl from rural Marange in the east of the country.
“Sadly, disturbing reports of the sexual violation of under-age girls, including forced child marriages continue to surface and indeed this is another sad case,” the U.N. said in its statement.
According to UN, one in three girls in Zimbabwe was likely to be married before turning 18 years old.
One of the key instruments to ending child marriages in Zimbabwe, the U.N. believes, is to fast-track the adoption of the Marriage Bill that recognizes child marriage as crime and, of course, rolling out national action plan on ending child marriages will go a long way.”
Police and the country’s state gender commission said they were investigating the circumstances that led to the girl’s death and burial. Local media have reported that the girl died last month but the case came to light only last week after angry relatives, who were barred by the church’s security from attending her burial, told their story to the state-owned press.
Zimbabweans took to social media to express their outrage.
“What you see today, i.e. a young girl forced to marry, get pregnant, & dies, is not an aberration! It is part of the same continuum. Female persons are not seen as fully human, with individual rights, choice, rights to control our own bodies,” Everjoice Win, a feminist and rights activist, stated.
