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Malawi proposing marriage age at 18

Malawi’s Minister of Gender, Children, Social Welfare and Disabilities Patricia Kaliati has revealed that government has proposed 18 as the minimum marriage age for girls in the current review which is ready for Cabinet approval before it is taken to Parliament.

Currently, the minimum age is at 13 with consent from parents or guardians.

Kaliati: It will go to parliament
Kaliati: It will go to parliament

Kaliati disclosed this to journalists on Thursday at Kanongola Primary School in Salima after presiding over this year’s celebrations for the International Day for the Girl Child and the Launch of the ‘Ending Child Marriages Campaign in Malawi’.

Said Kaliati: “Government is taking serious steps towards making sure that we end child marriages and in view of this, we have stepped up efforts to review the marriage age and come up with a suitable age that will allow our girls to go far with their education.

“As of now, the Cabinet committee has already recommended that the minimum marriage age should go up to 18 years and this will be taken to full Cabinet before it is taken to Parliament.”

She also said as a way of ensuring that girls and other children are attending school, the law is going to punish all parents who send the children to sell merchandise for negligence.

In his speech, chairperson of the End Child Marriage Campaign Task-force, MacBain Mkandawire said speedy constitutional amendment of the provision on marriage age will help the campaign to achieve its objectives.

As part of their efforts to end child marriages and school dropouts by girl children in her area, Traditional Authority (T/A) Mwanza in conjunction with her chiefs said they have come up with by-laws to check the malpractice.

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One Comment

  1. proposing marriage age at 18 so what? let us look at law enforcement in Malawi. Malawians we are very poor at enforcing the laws we have. most malawians are not aware of these laws as a result they do not cooperate in handling the issues of early marriages. The social welfare department is underfunded it can not execute their duties effectively ie child protection workers they do not have reliable means of transport even child protection workers at Victim support unit they do not have resources to follow up these case. Apparently if we are going to be associating chiefs with these issues w are not going to achieve results. these days chiefs are very irrelevant, they are greedy, they are too much into party politics, most of the are ignorant. we are wasting time to involve chiefs. by laws are not working because of lack of awareness.

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