Child Marriage and Adolescent Pregnancy in Mozambique: Policy Brief
22 July 2015 Child & social protection
Child marriage is one of Mozambique’s most serious but largely ignored development challenges – requiring far greater attention from policy makers.
The fact that Mozambique has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world, affecting almost one in every two girls, is one of the worst human rights violations against girls. It also undermines efforts to reduce poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals – in particular by halting girls’ education prematurely and leading directly to teenage pregnancy, with heightened risks of maternal and child mortality.
Economic pressures and sociocultural traditions continue to drive families to marry off their daughters at a very young age when they are not mature enough to give meaningful consent or to take on the responsibilities of becoming wives and mothers. Many drop out of school and quickly become pregnant, before their bodies are ready for childbearing, with very serious implications both for their own health and for the survival of their children.
Mozambique has the world’s 10th highest rate of child marriage – measured as the proportion of women aged 20-24 who married in childhood, i.e. before they turned 18. The focus is on girls, since almost no boys marry before this age. The vast majority of these marriages are de facto unions, rather than legally registered marriages, but they are marriages nonetheless, formalized usually through customary procedures such as the payment of bride price (lobolo) to the girl’s family. According to data from the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) in 2011, 48% of women aged 20-24 married before they were 18 years old and 14% before they were even 15. Mozambique is lagging behind in tackling this problem. Its child marriage rates are much higher than the averages for the Eastern and Southern African sub-region and are exceeded by only one other SADC country, Malawi.
The fact that Mozambique has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world, affecting almost one in every two girls, is one of the worst human rights violations against girls. It also undermines efforts to reduce poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals – in particular by halting girls’ education prematurely and leading directly to teenage pregnancy, with heightened risks of maternal and child mortality.
Economic pressures and sociocultural traditions continue to drive families to marry off their daughters at a very young age when they are not mature enough to give meaningful consent or to take on the responsibilities of becoming wives and mothers. Many drop out of school and quickly become pregnant, before their bodies are ready for childbearing, with very serious implications both for their own health and for the survival of their children.
Mozambique has the world’s 10th highest rate of child marriage – measured as the proportion of women aged 20-24 who married in childhood, i.e. before they turned 18. The focus is on girls, since almost no boys marry before this age. The vast majority of these marriages are de facto unions, rather than legally registered marriages, but they are marriages nonetheless, formalized usually through customary procedures such as the payment of bride price (lobolo) to the girl’s family. According to data from the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) in 2011, 48% of women aged 20-24 married before they were 18 years old and 14% before they were even 15. Mozambique is lagging behind in tackling this problem. Its child marriage rates are much higher than the averages for the Eastern and Southern African sub-region and are exceeded by only one other SADC country, Malawi.