TANZANIA has passed new laws making marrying a girl under the age of 18 punishable by up to 30 years in prison as part of a crackdown on the scourge of teenage pregnancies and the high dropout rate of female pupils from school.
Across Tanzania, 15m girls under the age of 18 are married off each year. Some of these marriages are arranged for financial reasons or are simply part of a cultural norm leading to the girls being unable to complete their education.
In addition, Tanzanian underage mothers have a high risk of dying in childbirth, contracting HIV and being victims of domestic or sexual violence. At the moment, 37% of underage girls in Tanzania are married and more than one in five Tanzanian teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 have given birth.
A new law passed in the Tanzanian parliament aims to change this trend by making it illegal and punishable by up to 30 years in prison for a man to marry or impregnate a primary-school or second-school age girl. Previously, girls as young as 14 were able to legally be married if their parents consented to it or as part of a special court consent procedure.
This new law concerning child brides and underage pregnancies makes such marriages illegal under any circumstances. This legislation is not the only effort to ensure a brighter future with more possibilities and improve access to education for young girls in Tanzania as it goes hand in hand with Tanzania’s recently launched free education policy, which makes primary and secondary school education available at no cost to all Tanzanian children.
In addition, the government also issued a warning that parents who prohibit their children from attending school, letting them know that they will be punished. The new law, however, has some loopholes as heads of the area schools will be required to submit information on recent student marriages or pregnancies. .
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