---

UNICEF has made it a point to end child or early marriages around the world. Their quest has been impressive so far but there are still places in the world where this practice persist.

• Ghana was ranked one of the lowest countries in West Africa and central Africa for the fight against child marriages.

Early marriage mostly happens in places where the community is poor, sometime farming communities in Ghana and places where both parents and wards lack some form of formal education.

Sometimes these girls are forced into marriage for family survival or some family members in some years past in the northern part of the country uses their teenage girls in exchange for marriage because they are unable to pay the bride price demanded by these families. In the northern part of Ghana, some tribes take not less than three or more cows before they allow their girl child to go into marriage so all these practices out of greed, poverty and 'foolishness'.

Source

Effects of Child Marriage

Early marriages have massive impact on the well-being of the lady since physically, she is not that matured to enter into marriage. How to manage the house and relationship as a whole is something teenages finds extremely difficult to cope.

• These young girls are married to mature men who don't only force them into doing whatever they want but losses self respect, victims of marital abuses.
• Aside these the lady can be subjected to all sort of diseases and complications during pregnancies because her sexual organs are not well developed.
• The girl in question can even lose her life during child birth.
• Productivity levels in the nation reduces because most of these girls cannot do anything to support the husband and the nation as a whole.
• Poverty is more likely to occur as a result of lack of education.

Source

In Ghana we have been able to deal with this global issue to some extent but it is not entirely over. Since the enrollment of the free Senior High School program, a lot of girls have benefited from this program. Now girls of school going age goes to school for free and are given three square meals a day.

---

I believe strongly that, this has resulted in the reduction of our young girls who are pushed into marriages at an early stages. This program will help bring out young ladies with a lot of knowledge about life and even if they don't continue to tertiary, they can still work something out for themselves rather than depending on men for their survival.

Source

Gender equality will be bridged as time goes on in Ghana because of the number of girl child enrollment in our senior high schools in the country.

• These girls will spread the need to have better education when they move to their villages. There is a saying that "when you educate a man, you educate one person but when you educate a girl, you educate a whole nation" by James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey.

So I strongly we are on the right path trying to build a nation for the future.

This post was authored by @delakloe and edited by @oppongk