Credit: Equality Now
By Deborah Nyokabi
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 24 2024 (IPS)
Thandi*, a 14-year-old girl from Malawi, is both a child and a mother. After she and her siblings were orphaned, they were left in the care of their grandmother, who struggled to provide for them.
Thandi recalls with sorrow how two years ago, her grandmother ‘sold’ her to a much older man for a bride price of 15,000 Malawian Kwacha (approximately USD $8.65). This meager sum was only enough to buy a week’s worth of food for the family.
Forced to drop out of school to become a wife, Thandi’s dreams of education were abruptly curtailed when she left education in Standard 7 (Grade 6). She explains, “Watching my friends continue with their schooling while I grappled with the challenges of marriage has left lasting scars.”
Over 6,000 kilometers away in Nigeria’s north-western Niger State, at the end of May 2024, the local government orchestrated marriages for 100 young women. Most were orphans who lost parents in the frequent bandit attacks that plague the region. Local officials claim that all the brides were aged over 18, but there are serious concerns that many were minors.
Child marriage remains widespread across Africa
A new report by Equality Now, Gender Inequality in Family Laws in Africa: An Overview of Key Trends in Select Countries, reveals pervasive discrimination in family laws across Africa, where child marriage remains widespread.
The continent is home to 127 million child brides. Although global rates of child marriage have declined from 23% to 19%, current trends suggest that by 2050, nearly half of the world’s child brides will be African.
The causes of child marriage are multifaceted. Challenges such as climate crisis, conflict, and socio-economic instability disproportionately affect women and girls, putting them at greater risk of human rights violations.
Rather than addressing systemic issues like poverty, sexual violence, and poor access to social support and reproductive healthcare, communities often resort to marrying girls off.
Governments are failing to protect girls
As in Thandi’s case, child marriage is commonly treated as a socio-economic band-aid. In her home country of Malawi, the practice has been completely illegal since 2017, when the government took the commendable step of raising the age of marriage to 18 for both boys and girls without exception.
However, child marriage remains widespread amongst a population that has over 70% living below the international poverty line, with 2020 data showing that 38% were married before the age of 18,
The situation is similar in other African countries. Niger is reported to have the world’s highest rate of child marriage among girls, with 76% married before 18. While in Mauritania, World Bank research cited that girls from the poorest households are almost twice as likely to marry compared to those living in the richest households.
Child marriage reinforces gender inequality, with girls viewed primarily as wives and mothers. What is especially concerning is how these harmful societal norms are sometimes state-backed by governments less willing to uphold girls’ rights.
In Mali, a watershed judgment by the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in 2018 found Mali’s Personal and Family Code, which allows girls to marry at 15 or 16 while setting the same for boys at 18, violated Mali’s international and regional human rights obligations.
The African Court directed Mali to revise its Family Code to set the minimum age of marriage for both girls and boys at 18. Mali’s government has not yet implemented the judgment, rendering girls vulnerable to becoming child brides.
In Tanzania, a landmark judgment in 2016 mandated the government to set the minimum age of marriage for both boys and girls at 18, but Tanzania has yet to amend the Law of Marriage Act. This failure to enforce the judgment is leaving girls unprotected and is compounded by challenges that pregnant girls and adolescent mothers face in accessing education.
Tanzania’s long-term policy of expelling pregnant students from school was ruled by the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) in 2022 to be a violation of girls’ human rights.
While the government has subsequently officially withdrawn this policy, the provisions in the Education Act that authorise exclusion from school of girls who are married, pregnant, or mothers remains unchanged, and there are serious concerns about the impact of Tanzania’s failure to fully implement ACERWC’s decision.
Girls across Africa who become pregnant may face the trauma of being forced to marry as a way to uphold family “honour” and avoid the social stigma associated with pregnancy outside of wedlock.
A cycle of abuse is perpetuated with young wives often denied access to education and economic opportunities, leaving them dependent on their husbands and in-laws. This makes them more susceptible to domestic violence and limits their ability to seek help or escape abuse.
African States have legal obligations to protect girls from early marriage
Child marriage is a gross violation of human rights and is prohibited by Article 16(2) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), Article 6 of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol), and Article 21 (2) of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (the African Children’s Charter).
The Constitutive Act, which established the African Union, recognizes the promotion of gender equality as a fundamental principle of the Union. Guidance on how Member States can end child marriage is provided by instruments such as the Joint General Comment of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) on Ending Child Marriage.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Model Law on Eradicating Child Marriage and Protecting Children Already in Marriage is another great source for states to consider.
Government progress has been slow and inconsistent
Equality Now’s family laws report notes laudable progress, with comprehensive bans on marriage under 18 years introduced in various countries, including Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and The Gambia.
However, progress overall has been protracted, inconsistent, and impeded by setbacks, insufficient political will, and weak implementation. Challenges are compounded by the plural legal systems in many African countries, where religious and customary legal provisions often contradict regional and international human rights standards.
In countries such as Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal, South Sudan, Sudan, and Tanzania, discriminatory age limit provisions permit girls to be married younger than boys, while in nations including Angola, Algeria, and Tunisia, exceptions on civil or customary grounds remain.
Education is a remedy for child marriage
Urgent action is needed by 2030 to ensure all girls complete a full cycle of basic education. African leaders must work fast to develop and accelerate the implementation of progressive education policies that align and integrate with laws and policies addressing child marriage.
Strengthening legal frameworks to ensure the minimum age of marriage is set at 18 without exceptions is essential. Prosecution and punishment of perpetrators should be accompanied by behavior change campaigns that shift social norms and raise awareness about the harms of early on girls, their children, and the wider society.
Underpinning this all should be the application of a multi-sectoral approach entailing coordinated efforts across multiple sectors, including the state and civil society. Government policy and funding must prioritize women’s rights and define the responsibilities of different government arms, including health, finance, justice, social welfare, youth, and education agencies.
Providing scholarships and financial incentives, such as conditional cash transfers, can help keep girls in school and diminish the economic incentives for early marriage. Rwanda is a good example, having achieved significant increases in girls’ school enrolment and a corresponding decrease in child marriage.
The country has made education free and compulsory through secondary school, and the state is investing heavily in teacher training and school infrastructure.
Another noteworthy case is Ethiopia’s investment in the Berhane Hewan programme, which combines education with community awareness. Girls who participated were 90% less likely to be married before the age of 15 compared to those not in the programme.
Enhancing the capacity to collect, analyse, and use sex-disaggregated data for policymaking is also crucial for informed decisions. This data can highlight disparities and guide targeted interventions.
Moreover, implementing education programs that include comprehensive sex education is vital. Such programs empower girls with knowledge about reproductive health and their rights, thereby reducing rates of child marriage and early pregnancies.
In Mozambique, the Gender Strategy for the Education Sector aims to create equal rights and opportunities for girls in the education sector. While a strategy like this is geared towards equality in education, if data collection around child marriages is incorporated it can produce results on strategy’s impact on child marriage.
Governments must tackle the root causes of child marriage
To genuinely protect and empower young women, governments must address the underlying causes of girls’ vulnerabilities. This includes tackling drivers such as conflict and climate crisis, improving social protection systems, introducing legal reforms to prohibit child marriage without exception, and ensuring the effective implementation of laws.
Efforts must also be made to challenge and change harmful cultural and religious practices that undermine the rights of women and girls.
Critically, African Union Member States must universally ratify and implement the Maputo Protocol and the African Children’s Charter. To adequately equip girls to thrive in the 21st century, they must also discharge the education and gender equality obligations they have committed to under Agenda 2063 and Africa’s Agenda for Children 2040.
*Thandi is not her real name.
Deborah Nyokabi is Gender Policy Expert, Equality Now.
IPS UN Bureau
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Written by Krisztina Binder.
The European Union (EU) has been pursuing cultural cooperation with its Mediterranean partners for decades, enhancing dialogue and understanding between people. The Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), an intergovernmental organisation composed of the 27 EU Member States and 16 Mediterranean partner countries, recently launched the Mediterranean Capitals of Culture & Dialogue initiative to promote diversity and shared cultural identity in the Euro-Mediterranean region. Alexandria in Egypt and Tirana in Albania have been chosen to become the first Mediterranean Capitals of Culture and Dialogue, in 2025.
IntroductionThe Euro-Mediterranean region boasts a rich and diverse cultural life and heritage, shaped by the coexistence of various cultures and traditions and millennia of cultural exchange. Culture has therefore been an area of cooperation between the EU and its partners in the Mediterranean region for many years. EU cultural cooperation in the region is guided by the significant role that culture plays in achieving sustainable human development. The Commission’s New European Agenda for Culture, adopted in 2018, identified culture as a vector for sustainable social and economic development and a factor in promoting peace, including through people-to-people contacts fostered by education and youth projects. Cultural co‑creation meanwhile serves as a valuable tool for communicating EU values, including artistic freedom and cultural rights.
In 2022, a conference of Euro-Mediterranean region culture ministers – the first such ministerial meeting of the EU-Southern Partnership – was held in Naples, following up on the first G20 meeting devoted to culture, held a year earlier. The protection of cultural heritage and the role of culture in sustainable development were among the topics discussed at the conference. Its outcomes paved the way for new EU programmes supporting cultural initiatives in the Mediterranean.
Cooperation in the Euro-Mediterranean regionOver the years, the network supporting Euro-Mediterranean relations has expanded. Several frameworks offer a structure for these relations and serve to promote cooperation in various areas, including culture.
The EU’s privileged partnership with the Mediterranean’s eastern and southern shores began in 1995, when the then 15 EU Member States and 12 Mediterranean partner countries launched the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, also known as the Barcelona process. The objective was to establish an area of peace, stability and shared prosperity, while promoting better understanding among people through social, cultural and human exchange. The partners recognised the pivotal role of culture in relations between countries and understood that dialogue between cultures and human exchanges could further strengthen their relations.
Since 2004, European Neighbourhood policy (ENP) has governed relations between the EU and 16 of its geographically closest eastern and southern neighbours. Under the 2015 revised ENP, a 2021 joint communication on a renewed partnership with the Southern Neighbourhood proposed a new agenda for the Mediterranean to relaunch and strengthen the strategic partnership with the 10 southern partners. This agenda guides the EU’s bilateral, regional and cross-regional cooperation under the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI). It also emphasises the need to foster inter‑religious and intercultural dialogues and enhance the capacity to combat the illegal trafficking of cultural heritage.
The 2021-2027 multiannual indicative programme for the Southern Neighbourhood outlines the strategic priorities for regional cooperation, noting that ‘The role of culture as a vector for peace, democracy and economic development will continue to be supported to help build a more inclusive Mediterranean. Culture is a field where there is a real added value in working at regional level to reduce social isolation and build connections across the Mediterranean region’.
The Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) was launched in 2008, building on the Barcelona process and seeking to reinforce the partnership. Complementing EU bilateral and regional cooperation with the Southern Neighbourhood, the UfM is an intergovernmental organisation that gathers all the EU Member States and 16 Mediterranean partner countries. It promotes regional cooperation and dialogue through the implementation of projects and initiatives addressing the objectives of regional stability, human development and economic integration. The permanent UfM secretariat, located in Barcelona, works closely with other institutions – such as the Parliamentary Assembly of the UfM (PA-UfM) and the Euro‑Mediterranean Regional and Local Assembly (ARLEM) – to pursue the Barcelona process objectives.
Examples of cultural cooperationSince 1995, a wide range of initiatives, programmes and projects have been developed to promote the exchange of ideas and foster better mutual knowledge and understanding.
Under the Barcelona process, the implementation of the partnership’s cultural dimension included the Euromed Heritage programme, which aimed to highlight and safeguard the physical and non-material heritage of the Mediterranean. The evaluation of its first phase, launched in 1998, emphasised that the region’s common cultural heritage benefited dialogue and cultural understanding.
The Euromed Audiovisual programme, initiated in 2000, supported Euro-Mediterranean cooperation projects in radio, television and cinema.
The Anna Lindh Foundation (ALF), inaugurated in 2005, seeks to foster intercultural and civil society dialogue by bringing together civil society from across Europe and the Mediterranean to work on issues related to youth, media, values, religion, peace, co-existence and others.
To honour the cultural richness of the region, the UfM launched the Day of the Mediterranean – marked every year on 28 November – to foster a common Mediterranean identity, promote intercultural exchange and celebrate the region’s diversity.
Jointly coordinated with ALF and in partnership with ARLEM, the UfM has also recently launched the Mediterranean Capitals of Culture and Dialogue. The initiative is based on the 2022 Naples Declaration of the Euro-Mediterranean/EU Southern Partnership culture ministers, who called for the creation of a Capital of Mediterranean Culture modelled on the European Capitals of Culture. A recommendation to the same effect by over 200 young civil society representatives was presented at the 2022 Forum des mondes méditerranéens. The new initiative, under which a northern and a southern Mediterranean city will be selected each year, is designed to promote the region’s cultural diversity and foster better mutual understanding among its people. Following a call for applications, Alexandria and Tirana were chosen to be the first Mediterranean Capitals of Culture and Dialogue in 2025, with a year-long programme planned for each city. The deadline for local and regional authorities representing cities from the UfM region to submit their applications for the 2026 edition was early July 2024.
The UfM also identifies and supports cooperation projects that reinforce partnerships across the region. For instance, the Euromed University of Fes (UEMF) in Morocco and the Euro-Mediterranean University (EMUNI) in Slovenia promote dialogue, mutual understanding and intercultural exchange. Within this context, fostering intercultural dialogue through educational, professional, cultural, and artistic exchange among young people in the Euro-Mediterranean region, in collaboration with ALF, is another of the UfM youth strategy‘s key actions.
Recently, a project to boost the cultural and creative industries and their contribution to economic growth and job creation was signed as part of a programme, the first in the context of the Morocco-EU partnership to support the cultural and creative industries in Morocco. Another initiative is CREACT4MED, a 4-year (2020- 2024) regional programme seeking to promote entrepreneurship and employment creation for youth and women by harnessing the cultural and creative industries in the Southern Neighbourhood.
In October 2021, the European Parliament’s Committee on Culture and Education (CULT) and Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) held a joint public hearing on ‘Culture in the EU’s external relations’.
Read this ‘at a glance’ note on ‘Euro-Mediterranean cultural cooperation‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.
Le 20 juillet 1974, l'armée turque envahissait Chypre du Nord. Quatre jours plus tard, le 24 juillet, la dictature des Colonels (1967-1974) tombait enfin. La Grèce mettait fin à la monarchie, à la censure, dépénalisait l'adultère, renouait avec la démocratie et s'ouvrait à la modernité. Pourtant, l'État de droit est aujourd'hui en crise. Revue de presse.
- Articles / Courrier des Balkans, droite dure Grèce, Grèce, Histoire, Politique, Une - Diaporama, Une - Diaporama - En premierOroszország bejelentette, hogy két ukrán falut foglalt el a frontvonalon, miközben vasárnapra virradóan Kijevet és több ukrán régiót ismét tömeges dróntámadás ért.
Az orosz védelmi minisztérium felvételt tett közzé, amelyen állításuk szerint orosz erők sorozatos rakétacsapást mérnek két ukrán páncélos egységre a Donyecki régióban. Az éjszakai támadás során az ukrán államfő közlése szerint az ország ellen indított 39 drón és két robotrepülőgép közül 35-öt sikerült lelőni.
Volodimir Zelenszkij, Ukrajna elnöke a Telegramon megismételte, hogy Ukrajnának nagy hatótávolságú fegyverekre van szüksége városai és a frontvonalon harcoló csapatai védelme érdekében. Hangsúlyozta, hogy az orosz légitámadások megakadályozása érdekében az orosz légibázisokon kell megsemmisíteni a támadásra készülő eszközöket. „Mindenki, aki ebben támogat minket, a terror elleni védekezést támogatja” – fogalmazott.
Ukrajna továbbá vádolja Oroszországot, hogy megtámadta az ukrán elsősegélynyújtókat, akik egy Szumit ért támadás helyszínére vonultak ki, hogy ellássák a sebesülteket. Pénteken az oroszok rakétacsapást mértek egy lakóövezetre Mikolajivban, ahol legalább három halálos áldozatot követelt az újabb légitámadás.
Területi Korlátozások Feloldása Nyugati Fegyverek Bevetésére
Volodimir Zelenszkij pénteken Londonban a nyugati fegyverek területi korlátozásainak feloldását kérte. Kijelentette, hogy az ukrán fegyveres erőknek nagy hatótávolságú eszközökre van szükségük, mivel ha az ukrán-orosz határövezetnél távolabbi helyszínekre – például orosz légitámaszpontokra – is csapást tudnak mérni, azzal az ukrajnai hadszíntéri pozíciókat és az ukrán városokat is meg tudják védeni az orosz bombáktól.
Zelenszkij elmondta, hogy Oroszország havonta átlagosan 3500 precíziós vezérlésű bombát vet be Ukrajna ellen. Bár nem lehet mindegyiket lelőni, a hordozókat azonban maradéktalanul meg lehet semmisíteni. Az ukrán elnök kérte, hogy a brit kormány vegye rá partnereit a nyugati fegyverek bevetésére szabott területi korlátozások feloldására, mert ezzel lehetne Moszkvát békés megoldásra kényszeríteni.
The post Újabb orosz dróntámadás Ukrajna ellen: Zelenszkij nyugati fegyverek feloldását kéri appeared first on Biztonságpiac.
On met tout le monde dans le bateau et on voit s'il ne prend pas l'eau. Le gouvernement du Monténégro s'élargit aux partis pro-serbes et pro-russes de l'ancien Front démocratique, ainsi qu'au Parti bosniaque. Avec 32 ministres (dont seulement six femmes), c'est le cabinet le plus important en nombre de l'histoire du pays.
- Le fil de l'Info / Après Milo, Monténégro, Politique, Courrier des Balkans, Une - DiaporamaOn met tout le monde dans le bateau et on voit s'il ne prend pas l'eau. Le gouvernement du Monténégro s'élargit aux partis pro-serbes et pro-russes de l'ancien Front démocratique, ainsi qu'au Parti bosniaque. Avec 32 ministres (dont seulement six femmes), c'est le cabinet le plus important en nombre de l'histoire du pays.
- Le fil de l'Info / Après Milo, Monténégro, Politique, Courrier des Balkans, Une - Diaporama