Let women decide when to marry – Naa Torshie

Deputy Minority Whip, Irene Naa Torshie Addo Thursday said African women have the right to determine when and who to marry, noting that forced and early marriages impugned on their human rights and held life-long consequences.

“Majority of our population are women and so it is about time we developed their potentials. It’s all part of politics. When women come into politics, they are driven away, we are the majority and so what we are saying is that give women the chance to decide on their own what they want to do with their lives”, she noted.

Addressing Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA) the ongoing seminar on combating child, early and forced marriage in Accra, the Tema West lawmaker cautioned that early and forced marriages have the potential of shuttering dreams and the early Africans rise up to stop it the better.

“Marriage is not everything in this world. As Africans we love marriage this must come at the right time after getting the right person. Nobody should be forced into early marriage”.

“Once a woman is forced into marriage, her potentials of becoming a lawyer, a doctor, a nurse and a teacher are completely shuttered because she becomes a mother throughout her life”.

“This must cease”, she added.

The PGA is An NGO network of over 1,302 individual legislators from 143 countries working on human rights issues.

The two-day seminar (March 2-3, 2016) is aimed at building political support to foster an enabling legal and policy environment that protects women’s and girls’ rights; follow-up on the commitments adopted by Parliamentarians in Ghana (2014) and Tanzania (2015) on child, early and forced marriage and assess their parliamentary results; and facilitate engagement between members of Parliament (MPs) and all relevant stakeholders working in this field, especially, between MPs and civil society.

The event is also aimed at promoting cross-learning among African Parliamentarians to consolidate a network of peers working together to end child, early and forced marriage; discuss strategies on how to implement and monitor at the national level PGA’s Global Parliamentary Declaration to end child, early and forced marriage in line with sustainable development goals’ target 5.3 calling to an end of this practice; and to also build capacity and political support among MPs on the current development of a National Strategic Framework to end child marriage led by the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection as well as in harmonizing the Children’s Act with the Child and Family Welfare Policy (2015).

Among the topics that were discussed at the event include; causes, consequences and challenges of child, early and forced marriage: what can Parliamentarians do?; improving synergies among Parliamentarians, religious and traditional leaders, civil society and the media to end child, early and forced marriage; utilizing regional and international for and key outcome documents to foster and effect change: the African Union Campaign to end child marriage and PGA’s Parliamentary Declaration on child, early and forced marriage.