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Sexual Initiation Ceremonies & Camps to Prepare Girls for Child Marriage in Zambia & Mozambique
File photo a young girl searches
for shellfish on the Indian Ocean shore line in Vilanculo, Mozambique. RETUERS/
Goran Tomasevic
CASABLANCA, May 21, 2015 (Thomson
Reuters Foundation) - Girls as young as eight in Mozambique and Zambia are
forced to go to camps or initiation ceremonies where they are shown how to
please a man in bed in order to prepare them for married life, activists said
at an international conference on ending child marriage.
The three-day conference ending
was hosted by Girls Not Brides, a global partnership committed to eradicating
child marriage which affects some 720 million women worldwide.
These sexual initiations begin
once menstruation starts and sometimes involve sticks being inserted inside the
girls, Persilia Muianga of international aid agency World Vision, said.
She added that some mothers force
young daughters to sleep with a man in the belief this can bring on
menstruation.
Anglican priest Jackson Jones Katete
said initiations in Zambia happen among girls between the ages of eight and 13,
and may involve girls being cut by women for not performing sexual movements
correctly.
"You ... pay these (elder)
women to do this torturing to your child," he said, adding that men do not
want to marry girls unless they have been initiated.
"Immediately the girls come
out of the camp, they are saying ... you are now ready for sex. And then the
men come ... and then they begin to do the betrothals."
The training also teaches girls
about hygiene, domestic duties and how to conduct themselves in the community,
Muianga said, adding that community leaders fine parents if they do not take
their daughters to the initiations.
ROLE OF RELIGION
Muianga, a child protection
expert, said the sexual age of consent in Mozambique is 12 and many girls have
babies very early, putting their lives at risk.
Serious childbirth injuries such
as fistulas are a big problem because so many girls have babies before their
bodies are ready, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation during the conference
in the Moroccan city Casablanca.
Nearly half of girls in
Mozambique and more than 40 percent in Zambia are married before they turn 18,
even though child marriage is illegal in both countries.
Bride prices paid to the girl's
family drive early marriage in poor rural areas, Muianga said.
She said World Vision is training
church leaders to tackle issues around early initiations and child marriage,
and will help develop a similar initiative for Muslim communities.
Katete, who is director of the
Anglican Street Children's Programme in Zambia, said church leaders carry great
authority in his country and have a role to play in addressing initiations and
child marriage with their congregations.
He added that keeping girls in
school is crucial for fighting early marriage, but most rural communities do
not have schools nearby and teachers in these regions are usually men, which
sends girls the signal that only boys deserve education.
"We are now saying that you
should build schools in villages and have female teachers there as well who can
act as role models."