Zimbabwe: campaigners take action to end child marriage across the country!

Youth activists, community groups, and NGOs across Zimbabwe have run diverse events and activities in December to raise awareness of child marriage in their communities, and engaging people directly to take the pledge to end child marriage. Focusing mainly on communities where child marriage is more prevalent, the activities encompassed sport, conversations with families, online discussions, and events with government representatives.

Zimbabwe National Students' Union (ZINASU) targeted two different areas just outside the capital Harare: Seke Rural and Ziko Growth Point. Instead of running events in each area, the student campaigners engaged people by going door to door, speaking to families and workers in local businesses. They discussed the issue of child marriage and asked people to take the pledge. In the course of their campaign, they received several requests to visit primary and secondary schools in the area, and the team at ZINASU hope to organise events with rural schools in the new year.

Two different communities had sporting events, at which participants took the pledge to end child marriage.

In Bulawayo, the pledge was taken by participants at the #Run4Rights marathon, which was hosted by Amnesty International and supported by the Women's Institute for Leadership Development.

In rural Luunga community, children and young people took part in a day of sports activities, and the community pledged to end child marriage (main image above).

Help Her Heal is an online rapid response and coordination platform, which used Whatsapp to engage with hundreds of individuals on child marriage for the campaign. Help Her Heal was set up during the global pandemic to provide a rapid response service to women and girls enduring domestic and gender-based violence during the lockdown.

For the campaign, group members discussed "The role of traditional courts in combating Gender Based Violence, in particular, child marriage". More than 200 people connected on each day of the campaign. A poll of the members revealed that there was unanimous agreement that child marriage was an offence.

Furthermore, participants proposed an array of multi-sectoral measures to stop child marriage, including engagement with children and parents, encouraging communities to use the law to report child marriages, and advocating for the traditional justice system to adopt measures that put an end to child, early and forced marriages and unions and other harmful traditional and religious practices. The campaign ended on a high note with anti-GBV stakeholders taking to the 'podium' to share their work and encourage further preventive measures. These were Padare//Enkundleni, Men's Forum, an organisation that promotes male engagement, Care Zimbabwe, a developmental organisation that advocates for gender parity and economic empowerment, and Ruvimbo Topodzi, an advocate against child marriage, who approached the Constitutional Court in 2015 to have child marriage declared a human rights violation. Her court case resulted in a law that criminalises child marriage in Zimbabwe.

In Shashe, a rural area in Masvingo Province, an event with more than 60 participants was successfully held, with school children, farmers, representatives from the Ministry of Youths, the Ministry of Health, and the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) all in attendance. The event specifically targeted school children aged 12-18 years, taking advantage of the school holiday to ensure maximum attendance. The Police provided an in-depth session on child abuse, focusing on the dangers of early child marriages and teen pregnancies.

Kwekwe High School also held an event where students pledged to end child marriage - you can read more about it here.