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A girl and her brother sit in a
cave shelter in Tess village in the rebel-held territory of the Nuba Mountains
in South Kordofan, on May 2, 2012. Fleeing aerial bombardment by the Sudanese
air force, thousands of people have abandoned their homes and made makeshift
shelters between the rocks and boulders. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic
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Sudan should raise
the legal age of marriage from 10 years – the lowest in Africa – to 18, to
comply with international child rights standards, according to a report
released on Monday, which cited an overall improvement across the continent in
child protection.
If a girl is married before the age of 18, her body may not
be fully developed and her education will probably be cut short. She is more
likely to die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth, be beaten, raped or
infected with HIV by her husband, abused by her in-laws and remain poor.
Her children are
more likely to die before the age of one, or grow up malnourished, poor and
uneducated.
In Sudan, where
the Personal Status of Muslims Act of 1991 allows
children - boys or girls - as young as 10 to marry, 38 percent of young women
were married before the age of 18, according to a 2010 government survey. Blue Nile state
had the highest rate of child marriage, with 62 percent
of girls marrying before they turned 18 and 19 percent marrying before 15.
Although the
minimum age of sexual consent for a child is 18, an exemption in Sudan’s penal
code protects the spouse from being charged for sex within marriage to a child
under 18.
Greater Child
Protection:
The African Report
on Child Wellbeing 2013, produced by the Ethiopia-based African Child Policy
Forum research institute, found an improvement across the continent in the
number of countries acting to end child marriage.
Currently, 18 is
the minimum age of marriage for both boys and girls in 33
countries - compared with only 30 countries having 18 as a minimum age of
marriage for girls five years ago. Four other countries - Algeria, Lesotho,
Libya, and Rwanda - have a minimum above 18 for both sexes.
In the remainder of
African countries, the minimum age is either discriminatory against girls or
below 18.
Girls are allowed
to marry at age 15 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Seychelles,
Cameroon, Niger, Swaziland, Tanzania and Malawi. For Senegal, Guinea-Bissau and
Zambia, it is 16, while Chad and Burkina Faso allow girls to marry at 17.
Like Sudan, Malawi
is singled out as problematic for the discrepancy between the minimum ages for
sex and marriage.
While Malawi law
prohibits sex with a girl or boy younger than 16, the constitution allows a
child aged 15 to marry. However, unlike in Sudan, there is no exemption in
Malawi law to protect someone from having sex with his or her 15-year-old
spouse.
“It is important
that the minimum age of marriage is higher than the minimum age of sexual
consent as consummation is a prerequisite for a valid marriage,” the report
said.
Earlier this month,
Malawi’s President Joyce Banda issued a directive ordering
parliament to raise the age of marriage to 18 or 21.
The report found
legal protection in general for children is improving: A total of 35 countries
have enacted consolidated laws on children, up from 22 in 2007. These laws
address issues like child trafficking, the right to education and the minimum
age of marriage.
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