 ‘Teenage Mothers and Victims of Child Marriage Network’ in the Upper West Region in collaboration with Community Development Alliance (CDA) have petitioned President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
The petition is to demand urgent action to safeguard the lives and future of victims of child marriage and teenage mothers in the region.
“We regret to note that teenage pregnancy and teenage motherhood has denied many girls their health, education and childhoodâ€, the network lamented and added that approximately, three out of 10 girls in the region were teenage mothers according to reports from the Ghana Health Service (GHS).
The petition which was developed after a confidence and capacity building training organized by CDA in partnership with STAR-Ghana under the Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Programme Support was jointly signed by Ubeda Bawa, Network Spokes Person and Mercy Dakogri, Project Officer for CDA’s “Let Girls Learn, End Child Marriage†project.
The petition noted that when families, communities and the state failed in their duty to protect the poor girl, she falls as prey to bad men and boys which manifested in the high incidence of teenage mothers and child marriages.
The petition demanded government to immediately consider setting-up more and resourcing existing vocational and skills training centres to absorb and cater for the skill needs of the thousands of girls who dropped out of school every term due to teenage pregnancy, child marriage and other related causes.
It also called on government to immediately put in place effective mechanisms to ensure timely investigations and prosecution of all cases of defilement and ensure that victims of such acts were protected and safeguarded.
The petition wondered why the minimum age of consensual sex should be 16 years and that of marriage should be 18 years and therefore called on the government to expedite action to reconcile the age of marriage and consensual sex.
The petition further called on the government to immediately develop a policy and legislation that prohibited all public and private institutions from dismissing, suspending, withdrawing and discriminating in any form against girls and young women during pregnancy.
 The petition observed that many schools in Ghana disapproved of providing family planning education and services to girls on grounds that it was at variance with their policy, stressing that this inconsistency in implementation of policies turned to deny girls the need of sexuality education that would enable them prevent pregnancies.
It therefore called on government to ensure that the Ghana Education Service (GES) and the Ministry of Health were jointly committed to the implementation of the adolescent sexual and reproductive health in schools.
The petition called on the President to champion the campaign of a ‘Child Marriage Free Ghana’ where all girls could enjoy equal rights and opportunities and protected by the state from all forms of gender-based violence.