Child marriage in Ghana: Who cares?

Abstract

Child marriage is one of the major social problems that have attracted attention in recent times. The practice denies children the opportunity to develop their human capital potentials to participate fully in society, and also constitutes a violation of the rights of children to freely and fully consent to the choice of a spouse. Consequently, many institutions and organizations have rolled out several initiatives and interventions to help fight against the practice. This study aimed at mapping out institutions responding to the menace of child marriage in Ghana and examining the effectiveness and challenges of their initiatives and interventions. The researchers used purposive and snowballing sampling techniques to select eleven institutions working in the area of child marriage and engaged them in in-depth interviews to gather relevant information for the study. The findings show that, many institutions are variously, directly and indirectly, responding to the practice of child marriage in the country. These institutions offer variety of initiatives which can technically be classified as preventive, protective, promotive and transformative interventions. One major weakness identified from the various initiatives is the lack of a specific national policy direction to support and coordinate the initiatives and interventions.