Gender

Trapped in Limbo: Teenager girls caught between consent and marriage laws

A child according to Ghana’s Children’s Act, 1998, is any person below the age of 18 years and it clearly states that the best interest of the child shall be paramount in any matter concerning the child.

Again, it says the best interest of the child shall be the primary consideration by any court, person, institution or other body in any matter concerning the child.

According to Section 14 of the Act, ‘no person shall force a child to be betrothed, be a subject of a dowry transaction; or be married’.

The minimum age of marriage of whatever kind, it stated, shall be 18 years.

Ghana’s minimum age for sex

However, Ghana’s minimum age of consent to sex is ‘16’ years old. At this age, an individual is considered legally old enough to consent to participate in a sexual activity.

Ghana’s statutory rape law is therefore violated when an individual has consensual sexual contact with a person under age 16.

At the age of 16 years, most children in the part of the sub-region depend on their parents or guardians for their wellbeing-education, physiological needs (food, shelter, clothing, other basic necessities), and health needs among others.

When such a child, especially a female is legally permitted to consent to a sexual activity, it then means the child ‘should’ be able to take responsibility for whatever may be the effect of the sexual activity.

Disregard for loopholes in age consent to sex

A position paper on harmonising the age of sexual consent and the age of marriage in Ghana by the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection and UNICEF Ghana, states that despite the concerns arising from the disparity in age of sexual consent and age of marriage, it is noted that there have been limited legal interventions.

So far, it said attention had been on the campaign to end child marriages and much consideration had not been given to the age of sexual consent in the country.

In Ghana, sex is not a topic that is easily discussed in the open. The socio-cultural dynamics between parents and their children make it difficult for children to discuss their sexuality freely with older members of their family.

Exacerbated by the ubiquity of social media, the result is that many young children and adolescents learn about sex from peers, internet sources and experimentation. If a child is too young to marry before the age of 18, is he/she old enough to have sex at 16 years?

In their consultations, they found out people were far more willing to accept boys’ interest in sex as natural, than teenaged girls’ interest, which was regarded as wayward, and symptomatic of some deficiency in a girl’s upbringing or in the girl herself.

Statistics

In Ghana, many adolescents aged 15 to 18, whether married or not, have had sexual intercourse, according to the United Nations Population Fund report in 2016.

Additionally, 12 per cent of girls and nine per cent of boys have had sex before the age of 15 and statistics further show that 10 per cent of teens under 15 years are having sex.

A survey conducted by the Ghana Demographic Health (GDHS) in 2008 revealed that 44 per cent of young people have sex before age 18 and most initiate it at age 15.

According to the Ghana Statistical Service, between 2008 and 2014, the percentage of men and women between the ages of 25 and 40 who reported having sexual intercourse at age 15 decreased only one point, from 12 to 11 per cent (GSS 2015).

Furthermore, it has been estimated that four in 10 Ghanaian women and two in 10 men aged 15–19 have had sex before. (Alan Guttmacher Institute, 2004).

Experiences of survivors

In an engagement with Martha Asante, a 17-year old school dropout, she said: “I got pregnant at 16 and was forced to drop out of school. If the age of consent to sex was 18, I might have avoided this situation.

Since we were taught in school you can have sex at 16, I just gave in to a man who showed interest easily.”

Another, Naa Lamiokor Tagoe, a survivor of a child marriage, says: “I was married at 17 and had to endure physical and emotional abuse. If the legal age of marriage was enforced, I might have been spared this ordeal.”

Expert’s concerns

Mr Abdulai Jaladeen, the Upper East Regional Director of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), at the celebration of the International Day of the Girl Child in Bolgatanga, appealed to the Gender Ministry to lead the crusade for a memo to be sent to Parliament for the law to be amended.

The delay in reviewing the age of consent to sex, he said, allowed culprits of child sexual abuses to go scot free. “When an adult impregnates a child at the age of 16, the law can catch up on you, but some of these people go behind to influence parents and even the victim.

And once the girl appears before a judge, and says I consented, the judge and prosecutors cannot do anything,” he noted.

Mr Jaladeen explained that if the law was changed from 16 to 18, men who fell foul to the law against girls below the age of 18 years would be punished fairly no matter the culprit’s financial and social standing.

He also called for a review of the Children’s Act to give stiffer punishment to people who give their girls out for early marriages to serve as deterrent to others, adding that the fine of GH¢500 for convicting an offender of the law was too minimal and suggested that a provision that spelt out modalities be made to compel the culprit to ensure that her education was not halted.

Dr Ndonwie Peter, National Executive Secretary of Girls Not Brides-Ghana, a network of non-governmental organisations, said the results of early sex at 16 was pregnancy, which truncated the education of girls as they were in many instances forced to cohabitate or marry those responsible for impregnating them.

He explained that the harmonisation of such laws to peg the minimum age of girls consenting to sex at 18 years, would help to control the increasing rate of early and forced marriages.

Challenges

Problems associated with child sex before marriage is intimate partner violence, sexually transmitted infections, adolescent pregnancy, early childbirth including unsafe abortions and infringements on their sexual and reproductive health and rights. The sexual relation involving a child usually occurs between her and an adult.

Therefore the older persons often take advantage of the girls and give them little or no room to negotiate for safe sex.

The WHO states that at 16 years or lower, the biological constitute of the girl might pose as a threat to childbirth and girls who engage in sexual activities are more likely to get pregnant, a condition that puts them at risk of experiencing stillbirths, miscarriages, eclampsia, puerperal endometritis, and systemic infections.

The babies might also suffer preterm birth, low birth weight due to young maternal age at birth, and severe neonatal condition. Many teenagers at age 16 engage in sexual intercourse not for procreation, but out of curiosity or for the fun of it and aside its consequences, the teenage mother may not be prepared for marriage or be legally permitted to marry.

To avoid shame, the parents of the female children may force their daughters to marry the man who impregnated them.

The situation is more common in the coastal communities and the Northern part of the country, where the pregnant girl is forced to live with the man responsible and/or his family, reports have stated.

Ghana as a country that is hungry for growth with all parties involved such as government, civil society organisation, development partners and donor agencies, parents, students, religious and traditional leaders, the media as well as legal practitioners, need to analyse carefully if an addition to the population through unwanted pregnancies by children is positive and should be encouraged.

If a child born of a child is not well taken care of due to inadequate finances, that child becomes a burden on society and the government at large. They gradually join the large population to depend on the fewer resources, and thereby harden the lives of the citizenry much more. -GNA

Gender

WiSA launched to accelerate growth, close gender inequality gap

Women in Sustainability Africa (WiSA) has been launched in Accra with an aim to accelerate growth and the closure of gender inequality gap.

Speaking at the launch, the Convenor for WiSA, Nana Yaa Serwaa Sarpong, said that, “Gender inequality gap cannot be closed by women alone, calling for catalytic efforts to cause a revolution in order to achieve such goal.”

Madam Sarpong also stated that, “this is the new beginning of gender empowerment and the new wave which must be propagated across Africa without any antagonism.”

She said the key to bridging gender inequality gap is two sided, saying that, “First is men standing side by side with women and secondly, the recognition of women as a source of labour with positive return on every investment that is made to build capacity in women.”

Additionally, Madam Sarpong underlined that the organisation will work with men, ‘he or she’ champions, CSOs, Corporate Institutions, local and International Development Organisations to bring all women and women groups together (especially those at the grassroots level) to foster the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) across Africa.

The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Dr Agnes Naa Momo Lartey, said recognising the proportionate impact of climate change on women, the Ministry has developed a roadmap to strengthen gender responsiveness of social protection programmes.

According to her, this initiative aims to ensure that their interventions were inclusive, equitable and effective in building resilience among vulnerable populations.

The campaign will be celebrated as part of the activities of May 1, and throughout the month of May every year.

She disclosed that in partnership with WiSA and other stakeholders.

Dr Lartey again indicated that he Ministry will use the campaign to recognise women nationally and continentally as sources of labour and agents of sustainability.

Furthermore, the Minister stated that the campaign would be rolled out in schools, media platforms and community spaces.

The Minister of State in charge of Climate Change and Sustainability, Issifu Seidu, on his part said, “African women have always been the backbone of our communities, playing key roles in agriculture, healthcare, education, and the informal economy.

However, he noted that their contributions remain undervalued and underappreciated in many spheres of society.

By Esinam Jemima Kuatsinu

Gender

Plan International Ghana’s intervention enhances girls’ education

• The Plan International facility for school children

Plan International Ghana’s adolescent girls’ intervention in some communities in northern Ghana has helped retain adolescent girls in school and enhance their education to enable them to achieve their life aspirations.

These interventions included the adolescent Drop-in Centres, school Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) facilities, improved access to and use of sanitary pads and changing rooms for girls.

The Drop-in Centres had been equipped with indoor and outdoor games, including ludu, oware, and footballs and a television set, to keep the girls lively while going through mentorship and sensitisation at the Centre.

That became known during a field visit to the Mimima, Sagadugu and Guabuliga communities in the North East Region, where those interventions were being implemented to ascertain the impact of the projects on the people.

The visit was to climax a three-day capacity-building workshop for some journalists and media practitioners in northern Ghana organised by Plan International Ghana, a development and humanitarian Non-governmental Organisation (NGO).

At the Mimima community, where a Drop-in Centre had been constructed, some adolescent girls told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview that the Centre was empowering them to take responsibility for their bodies.

Agnes, 14 (not her real name), said they were receiving Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (ASRHR) education, including menstrual hygiene management, which had enhanced their dignity.

She noted that had enabled them stay in school during their menstrual periods, ensuring their effective participation in academic activities and improving their educational performances.

Ms Hamdya Baaba, the facilitator at the Drop-in Centre at Mimima, said she had been teaching the girls good menstrual hygiene management and SRHR to prevent them from pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.

Some parents in the community also praised the interventions as they saved their girl children from using rags to manage their menstruation.

“Some of us used to fold rags for our girl children during their menstrual periods, and because of that, they sometimes stained themselves with blood. But when Plan International Ghana came to this community, it taught the girls how to use sanitary pads.”

The NGO also gave the girls some reusable sanitary pads that they can always wash and use, and because of that, the girls are always in school even during their menstrual periods,” Madam Abena Miyanga, a parent, stated.

The Mimima community is also benefiting from the Educational Outcome Fund (EOF) project, where out-of-school children from the age of eight to 16 receive a nine-month cycle of literacy and numeracy training through Complementary Basic Education (CBE) and were integrated into the mainstream education.

Madam Miyanga told the GNA that her child, who dropped out of school, had returned and was currently in basic five through the EOF’s CBE programme.

Eleven-year-old Magdalene, a participant of the project and currently in basic six, expressed gratitude to Plan International Ghana for the intervention, as it had given her the opportunity to acquire formal education.

The Integrated Package for Sustainable Development (IPADEV) project constructed a WASH facility and girls’ changing rooms at the Sagadugu R/C Basic School to ensure safe access to WASH services and a place for menstrual hygiene management while in school. —GNA