By Gabriel Luryeyo
In some traditions, once a girl starts menstruating, she is considered ready to start her own home and have children. Many parents in such settings give away their child daughters in marriage if a man is willing to pay bride price. In Omoro District in northern Uganda where child marriage is rampant, a man would pay between 150,000 Shillings and 1.5 million Shillings in bride price, a cow, two goats, a lamp, paraffin, laundry bar soap, bathing soap, matchbox, and a spear.
This practice is not unique to Omoro. It is common in other communities in Acholi sub-region, increasingly drives by poverty and negative cultural beliefs where society regards girls as commodity. The prevalence of child marriage in Omoro District currently stands at 28 percent, according to statistics from the District Probation Department.
Ms Concy Laker is one of the hundreds of girls who have fallen victim to child marriage. In 2017, she was forced to marry a man much older than her. She had to drop out of school. The same year, Laker found herself pregnant. “I found myself pregnant at the age of 17. I was in Primary 7 then. I had to drop out of school,” Laker says.
Laker is now helping 36 child mothers to rebuild their lives. She is the chairperson of Lacankwite Women’s Group. The group started a Village Savings and Loan Association to support their members. Each member can borrow from the savings group and start a business.
Now at 24, Laker lives with her son in Hima Village, Akidi Sub County in Omoro District. “For child marriage to stop, parents who marry [off] their girls should be prosecuted in the courts of law. This will send warnings to other parents who intend to do the same. From my experience, child marriages put girls at the risk of being abused by their partners. It makes girls less of humans. It’s actually slavery,” she adds.
Child marriage refers to any union between a child under the age of 18 and an adult or another child. Although the legal age of consent to marriage in Uganda is set at 18, getting married formally or informally before this age is a common practice.
According to Ugandan laws children have rights that must be respected and observed. These include; right to life, right to live with their parents, right to education, protection from violence, ill-treatment and discrimination, protection from bad social / cultural practices and any type of work, which directly affects a child’s health and life.
Child rights activists blame the practice that denies young girls the opportunity to achieve their dreams through education on parents who do not see value in educating girls.
In Aremo Sub-county in Omoro District, at least 44 child marriages were dissolved in a period of just five months. Kenneth Odyek, the Aremo Sub-county chairperson said some of the victims of child marriages were as young as 15 years.
Catherine Lamwaka, the Omoro District Woman Member of Parliament (MP), says early marriages are destroying the future of the country. “These young girls being married at a very tender age are mothers of tomorrow. Therefore, if we destroy them today, what kind of future are we going to have as a country? So, protecting girls should be a collective responsibility,” she said.
According to Lamwaka, parents should be at the forefront of ending this harmful practice. “Parents should know that it is their role to protect girls. Unless parents get to know that no one else will provide the best protection, then this generation is wasted,” she adds.
The chairperson Ker Kwaro Lalogi-Puranga, one the cultural institutions in Acholi sub region, Stephen Santo Okello, said in the olden days, under the Acholi custom, a girl would get married at between the age of 15 and 16 years but he acknowledges that this is not acceptable under our legal provisions.
He warned parents about marrying off underage girls. “Our communities should know that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It criminalized any marriage involving a child. So, marrying a girl who is below 18 years old is a crime. I call upon parents to strictly observe the law,” he emphasizes.
The Paramount Chief of Acholi, Rwot David Onen Acana II, echoed the same sentiment. He described child marriage as a violation of human rights, saying it robs girls of their future. “Such practice is not only against the law but it also denies girls the opportunity to become useful citizens. A girl who becomes a mother at a young age is more vulnerable to intimate partner violence and sexual abuse,” he warns.
Paul Lalobo, the chairperson of Child Protection Committee for Ayomlony village, Labora Sub-county in Omoro District, blames the rampant child marriages in the district on poverty and peer pressure. He said some parents prefer to marry their girls off to rich men to relieve them of the burden of paying school fees. “Some parents think marrying their daughter off would bring them some money and get them out of poverty. They get so desperate that they want to get a quick fix to the problem they are facing as a household,” he notes.
“In one of the three cases I handled, parents married off their 17-year-old girl to a rich man. As child rights activists, we sought help from police so that the groom is arrested and charged accordingly but we failed because money was involved. The parents succeeded in their plans [to marry off] their young daughter. It was a very painful experience for me,” he reveals.
Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) David Ongom Mudong, the Aswa West Region Police Public Relations Officer, said local council officials and parents are the ones encouraging child marriages. “Unless local council officials and parents stop conniving with the perpetrators, we cannot do much. As police, we are ready to arrest those marrying off underage girls but we can only act if we are tipped off. We cannot be everywhere. Those who have received information that there is a marriage ceremony involving a child as a bride [should] inform the police so that we can act swiftly,” he adds.
Meanwhile, Stella Kijange Lajuri, a lawyer and human rights activist in northern Uganda, noted that local leaders and child marriage victims have a big role to play in ending the practice. “Once a child has been defiled, it is incumbent upon the child or the family or the community to report that case or offence to the police. But in our communities, cases are rarely reported to police. What hinders reporting of cases is one: the long distance from where the offence has been committed. Secondly, in between [the time] the offence has been committed and reporting to police, the evidence is lost. This makes it very difficult for prosecution to adduce evidence and make watertight cases,” she says.
She also noted that cases of child marriage usually happens in rural areas where majority of the people are poor. As a result, such communities are unable to provide fuel for police to go and effect arrest as well as pay 20,000 Shillings to the medical personnel to fill police form 3A. While police should ideally be facilitated to their work without burdening victims of crimes, requests by police for facilitation to do their work remains widespread, a practice that greatly hampers the search for justice by those unable to facilitate the process.
SIDE BAR
In 2022, the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development said one in four children in Uganda is married off before they are 18 years. The National Planning Authority data, which was released in 2021, showed that Uganda loses 1. 6 trillion Shillings annually in tackling issues of harmful cultural practices, including child marriage. According to a report by the UN children’s agency Unicef, the prevalence of child marriages is highest in Northern Uganda at 59 percent, followed by Western region (58 percent), Eastern region (52 percent), East central (52 percent), West Nile (50 percent), Central (41 percent), South west (37 percent), and lowest in Kampala (21 percent).
