Editorial of the Daily Searchlight of 8th April, 2024
Mr Evans Ghansah, an Assistant Social Development Officer, has appealed to parents to desist from forcing their children, especially the girl-child, into marriage.
He said the act was criminal and punishable by law as it contravened subsection 1© of section 14 of the Children’s Act, 1998 (Act 560) and that “no person shall force a child to be married”.
Mr Ghansah gave the admonishment at a child protection engagement at Dzindziso, a farming community in the Kadjebi District of the Oti Region.
He said the minimum age for marriage should be 18 years and that any person who contravened the law committed an offence and was liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding GH¢500.00 or to a term of imprisonment not exceeding one year or to both.
He called on the participants to help protect the child from neglect, violence, abuse, discrimination on the grounds of race, age, religion, disability, and health because he or she is a child.
Neither should the child be discriminated against on the grounds of status, custom, ethnic origin, rural or urban background, birth or social-economic status.
Mr Ghansah asked them to give equal attention to all children and treat them equally as they had peculiar God-given talent.
Children had rights such as right to education, recreational activities, shelter, and food so parents should live-up to their parental responsibilities, he said.
Mr Ebenezer Ahiabor, the Dzindziso community Child Protection Committee Chairman, commended the education team for the sensitisation.
The Daily Searchlight is in total solidarity with the call by Mr Ghansah. Recently, statistics emerged that a significant number of young, underage women were forced into marriage annually in Ghana.
We believe that as a nation that is quick to sign on to all the human rights charters in the world, our record when it comes to the protection of the rights of children in Ghana is nothing to write home about.
We believe that one way of improving th economic and social life of any community, is by improving the general standard of life in the community.
We hope that the call by Mr Ghansah would fall on good ears, and that the society would take it as a guide.
