US embassy cable - 05ACCRA550

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 ACCRA 000550 
 
SIPDIS 
 
PLEASE PASS TO L KHADIAGALA IN G/IWI 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ECON, ELAB, GH, KWMN, PGOV, PHUM, SCUL, SOCI 
SUBJECT: GHANA: SURVEY RESPONSE ON CHILD MARRIAGE 
 
REF: SECSTATE 36341 
 
1. This message is post's response to reftel, which requested 
information about the prevalence and adverse effects of child 
marriage in Ghana. 
 
Legal Age of Marriage 
--------------------- 
 
2.  Under Ghana's Children's Act, the legal age required to 
marry is 18 for both girls and boys. There is no lower legal 
age for marriage permitted with parental consent. However, 
many births and marriages are not registered, which often 
makes it difficult to enforce the law. The ages of brides 
often cannot be proven.  Moreover, the vast majority of 
Ghanaian couples form and celebrate their unions through 
traditional rites.  They then live together, recognized as 
married couples within their communities without any legal 
recognition.  Because these unions are not registered, they 
are not easily captured in statistics and it is difficult for 
the government to intervene to prevent child marriage in 
these cases. 
 
Scope of Child Marriage Problem 
------------------------------- 
 
3.  Child marriage is a problem in Ghana, but its magnitude 
is unknown as no reliable statistics exist to measure its 
overall prevalence or its concentration among various ethnic 
groups.  According to Ghana's Ministry of Women and 
Children's Affairs, no government entity currently tracks the 
statistical incidence of child marriage in Ghana. UNICEF's 
website (www.unicef.org) cites statistics gathered between 
1998 and 2003 to report that 25 percent of children in Ghana 
were subject to child marriages, with a higher incidence in 
urban areas.  However, the organization's local office 
disavows these numbers. A UNICEF Ghana official told us these 
numbers appeared inflated and at odds with the heavier 
concentration of child marriages in more rural areas noted by 
UNICEF's own Child Protection Teams. The only organization 
known to have documented actual cases is the Commission on 
Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ)'s Northern 
Region office, which last year received information about 125 
cases of forced marriages, most of which involved girls 
between 15 and 18 years old. 
 
4.  While many child protection experts believe child 
marriages are concentrated in the rural north of Ghana, some 
experts indicate the problem is more geographically 
dispersed.  In recent years, UNICEF and CHRAJ officials have 
witnessed child marriages in seven of the Northern Region's 
13 districts, three of the four districts in the Upper East 
Region, and one of the four districts in the Upper West 
Region. The Women and Juvenile Unit of the Ghana Police has 
also received cases in areas of the Brong Ahafo and Ashanti 
Regions bordering on the Northern Region. Children's Rights 
International's Kofi Appiah knew of child marriages in 
coastal districts and districts close to the Volta River and 
Lake Volta such as the Ada area of the Greater Accra Region, 
Elmina in the Central Region, and the Yilo Krobo District of 
the Eastern Region. 
 
5.  Poverty, cultural traditions and religious beliefs all 
contribute to the practice of child marriage in Ghana. In the 
majority of forced marriages, parents pledge to marry 
daughters against their will. In some cases, parents may 
resort to marrying their daughters early to avoid 
out-of-wedlock pregnancies, according to a CHRAJ contact. 
However, the prevailing motive is economic.  International 
Labor Organization/Ghana officials know of instances in which 
young men who could not afford dowries simply exchanged 
younger sisters.  Additionally, Children's Rights 
International points to two circumstances areas in which 
child labor frequently leads to child marriages. In fishing 
communities, the young girls who sell fish often elope with 
the men who employ them. Young girls who serve as domestic 
help also may find themselves taken as wives by the men they 
serve. 
 
6.  Despite the strong economic motive behind child 
marriages, culture and religion also are important 
contributing factors. In the Upper West, young girls commonly 
elope on market days with their pre-selected mates. In this 
cultural tradition, men display their bravery by stealing 
away the brides without the parents' knowledge. Among the 
Konkomba ethnic group of the Northern Region, daughter 
exchanges, pledges of brides at birth and inheritance of a 
deceased husband's wife are believed to promote social 
cohesion. Traditional rulers throughout Ghana routinely marry 
younger wives when they assume the throne (or stool). Cases 
have been reported in which these rulers have abused this 
practice to take an underage bride. 
 
7.  Child marriages in Ghana threaten gender parity in 
education and the associated development that takes place in 
communities when girls are permitted to complete school. 
Children's rights activists say these marriages also lead to 
early pregnancies, early terminations and the breakdown of 
families because these marriages are less likely to endure. 
 
USG-Funded Initiatives 
---------------------- 
 
8.  Post's Democracy and Human Rights Fund (DHRF) funded four 
workshops this year organized by The Islamic Foundation for 
Peace and Development (IFPD).  IFPD's program educates 300 
women and 1,000 students within the various Muslim 
communities of Greater Accra to promote school attendance and 
prevent child marriages. It has the support of Ghana's Muslim 
leadership and aims to influence not only the students, but 
also Muslim religious leaders who have endorsed child 
marriages in the past. 
 
9.  USAID/Ghana does not have programs which directly address 
child marriage.  USAID/Ghana's education program has an 
overall goal of improving access to and the quality of 
primary education in Ghana.  This includes a focus on 
improving educational opportunities for girls in the poor 
northern region of Ghana.  USAID will support scholarships 
for girls and its implementing partner will be establishing 
community-managed schools in rural areas with no appropriate 
schools.  The USAID/Ghana Safe Schools program seeks to 
create a safe environment to reduce gender violence and 
improve both education and health for school children.  While 
not specifically targeting child marriage, these USAID 
education programs should have some impact on reducing the 
incidence of child marriage. 
 
Priorities for Future Intervention 
---------------------------------- 
 
10.  The Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs and several 
children's rights organizations say they need baseline data 
on the prevalence of child marriage and its causes to develop 
more effective strategies to combat it. Public awareness and 
grassroots campaigns, particularly in the three Northern 
regions, may help to educate communities on how child 
marriage hinders development and to win over traditional 
leaders. (UNICEF's Child Protection Teams and CHRAJ have 
carried out grassroots campaigns to educate villagers and 
traditional rulers about the legal age to marry and to 
discourage child marriages.)  Victim assistance programs 
would liberate and provide economic assistance to children 
who have been forced into marriages. 
 
 
YATES