The Sunday Mail
Gilbert Munetsi
Churches have made a stand in the fight against gender-based violence, whose 16-day commemorations this year ran under the international theme “From Peace in the Home to Peace in the World: Make Education Safe for All”.
Zimbabwe’s localised sub-theme was “From peace in the home to peace in the community: Let us keep girls in school and end child marriage”.
The Zimbabwe Council of Churches held a launch at the United Methodist Church in Waterfalls, Harare and then decentralised it to Bulawayo Metropolitan, Nyamaropa in Nyanga, Rukweza in Nyazura and Karoi, among other places.
Mrs Rosemary Munaki, the ZCC programme officer for gender justice, said, “This year we decided that the church takes a stand against this ill and we had the Government joining our initiative through the Ministry of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development, as well as other partners that included the Norwegian Church Aid and the Act for Peace arm of the National Council of Churches which sent three delegates from Australia.
“We are happy that we were able to achieve our objective as the commemorations were observed in all parishes across the country. She added: “As the Church, we are committed to providing education to the communities on reducing existing gender gaps among men, women, boys and girls towards gender justice.
‘‘It is important to promote equality between males and females on their rights, responsibilities and opportunities, (Ephesians 5:21).”
Zimbabwe has a fully-fledged ministry to look into issues related to women and gender, and in 2006 legislation to further this objective was enacted (Domestic Violence Act Chapter 5:16).
Gender Minister Nyasha Chikwinya told The Sunday Mail Religion more needed to be done to protect victims, particularly girls.
“It is fact that child marriage constitutes a violation of human rights as enshrined in our own Zimbabwean constitution and research has shown it is mainly driven by poverty, cultural and social norms which discriminate against girls.
“As we seriously reflected on this year’s theme, we took cognisance and are extremely concerned with the consequences that include and are not limited to HIV infection as well as greater risk of pregnancy-related complications which encompass death and dropping out of school.
“We (as Government) are committed to ending the problem and as enshrined in our constitution — Sections 26 and 78 respectively — child marriages are explicitly outlawed.
Just four months ago we joined other countries in the region to launch the campaign that accelerates our local efforts as a country to put an end to this phenomenon.”
Minister Chikwinya said the country was reinforcing the importance of education as a critical component in helping girls stay in school and end early marriage.
Studies, she said, proved that girls with higher levels of schooling were less likely to marry as children when compared with their uneducated compatriots.
The scope of the 16 Days of Activism Against GBV revolves around provision of a platform for sharing strategies and challenges as well as demonstrating solidarity with victims.
Unicef, in its 2015 State of the World Report, indicated that child marriages in Zimbabwe remained rampant.
“The presence of a strong legal framework is one step towards addressing the problem of child marriages.
‘‘It is therefore critical to reinforce the strong legal provisions in the Constitution by realigning laws relating to the marriage and henceforth realignment of legislation such as the Marriages Act, Customary Marriages Act and the Children’s Act is crucial if we are to effectively address the problem,” said Minister Chikwinya.
