Dokument #1355758
HRW – Human Rights Watch (Autor)
The government’s Primary School Leaving Examination, which determines which pupils may proceed to secondary school, also exposes girls to child marriage, Human Rights Watch found.
Salia J., 19, was forced to marry at 15 after failing the leaving exam. “My father decided to get me a man to marry me because I was staying at home doing nothing,” she said.
“Mandatory pregnancy tests and expelling pregnant and married girls from school seriously infringes on their rights, especially to education,” Akia said. “The government should scrap its discriminatory regulations and enable pregnant and married girls and young mothers to continue with their education.”
Child marriage puts girls and women at greater risk of sexual and gender-based violence, Human Rights Watch said. Girls who rejected or tried to resist marriages said their families assaulted and verbally abused them or threw them out. Those unable to escape marriage said their husbands beat and raped them and did not allow them to make any decisions in their homes or about their lives.
A large number of those interviewed said their husbands abandoned them and left them to care for children without any financial support. In some cases, girls experienced violence and abuse at the hands of their in-laws. Girls from the Maasai and Gogo ethnic groups said they were forced to undergo FGM to prepare them for marriage.
The government should work toward comprehensive reform of marriage and divorce laws, including setting the minimum marriage age at 18, Human Rights Watch said. It should enact a domestic violence law to make sexual violence in marriage a criminal offense and develop a national action plan to prevent and address the consequences of child marriage.
The government should also put an end to pregnancy testing in schools, allow both pregnant and married students to remain in school, and take all possible steps to allow all children to attend secondary school irrespective of their Primary School Leaving Examinations.
“Child marriage has far-reaching negative impacts on girls and women,” Akia said. “Tanzania’s government should take immediate and long-term steps to end the practice, and give survivors much needed psychological, social, and economic support.”
29. Oktober 2014 | HRW – Human Rights Watch (Autor)
Tansania, Vereinigte Republik
No Way Out; Child Marriage and Human Rights Abuses in Tanzania (Appell oder Pressemitteilung, Französisch)
29. Oktober 2014 | HRW – Human Rights Watch (Autor)
Tansania, Vereinigte Republik
No Way Out; Child Marriage and Human Rights Abuses in Tanzania (Spezieller Bericht oder Analyse, Englisch)
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