Ghana has ratified various international conventions and key international instruments which seek to promote children’s human rights on issues relating to child marriage. Prominent among these are Convention on the CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN (CEDAW, 1980), CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD (CRC, 1990) THE African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990) among others. Some Ghanaian laws protecting children against child marriage are the Criminal Code 1960, the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana and the Children Act 560 of 1998.
Child marriage is any union, formal or informal to persons below the age of 18 years. Although child marriage has seen some decline in Ghana from 1 in 3 in the 1990’s to 1 in 5 children being married before the age of 18 in recent years, some regions still have high prevalence rate. According to the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection’s Resource Guide on Ending Child Marriage, 21% of girls and 2% of boys get married before age 18. This statistics highlights the fact that, child marriage affects more girls than boys.
The northern region has been and still leads in child marriage by 39.60% (DHS, 2014) and that is why Ups Avenue for Development chose to concentrate efforts at working in Kpandai District in the Northern Region. With the ongoing funding from PLAN GHANA and counterparts, under the project: WOMEN’S VOICE AND LEADERSHIP, UAD envisages a considerable decline in child marriages, in and around Kpandai District.
Preventing Child marriage and adolescent child bearing is one of the key indicators of the SDG Agenda. This phenomenon is global and its attendant health, social and economic implications are inimical not to the victim alone but ripples generationally through families and communities, then impacts the development of a country heavily.
