In some parts of Africa, it is common for people to marry below age 18. But this can lead to girls being coerced into marriage, and NGOs oppose all “child marriages,” even marriages of 17-year-olds who voluntarily get married with their parents’ consent, even though 17-year-olds are over the age of consent for sex in 133 countries.
So on December 23, Zambia banned marriages below age 18. Its parliament passed the Marriage (Amendment) Act of 2023, which sets the marriageable age at 18, without exception, for all marriages, including customary marriages.
This is a big change, because 1.7 million of Zambia’s 20 million people were child brides, and 400,000 Zambians got married before age 15. Zambia is a landlocked, mostly rural country deep in south central Africa. Parliaments in several other African countries have also recently banned marriage below age 18.
A news web site reports:
Zambia’s legal framework on child marriage presents a complex mix of customary and statutory laws that created ambiguity in interpreting where the country stands. For instance, prior to the 2023 amendment, the Marriage Act of 1964 allowed for parental and judicial consent for marriages between the ages of 16 and 21, and customary marriages had no age restrictions, thereby allowing children of all ages to marry under traditional law.
Following Zambia’s cabinet approval of the Marriage Bill 2023 in July 2023, the Network on Ending Child Marriage in Zambia (NECMZ), a coalition of 35 civil society organizations working to end child marriage in Zambia through advocacy and engagement, welcomed the move….“We need to ensure that child marriage was made illegal in its entirety,” said Womba Wanki, the Executive Director of Generation Alive (GAL), who is also the chairperson of the NECMZ Network….“In our submissions to parliament, we cited other laws such as the Anti-Gender Based Violence Act, No. 1 of 2011, the Education Act of 2011, and the Penal Code Act that also represented similar inconsistencies,” said Wanki….
Zambia is a signatory to International human rights instruments such as the Convention on the Rights of Children (CRC), the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC), and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol) that all categorically state the minimum age of marriage as 18, without any exceptions….
By passing this law, Zambia joins six other countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, and Zimbabwe, that have laws that fully provide for the minimum age of 18 for both boys and girls with no exceptions.
