Who will save children from marriages and sexual abuse?

It was a big story in the United States of America when a man was convicted for marrying off a fourteen-year-old girl to her nineteen-year-old cousin. The man is Warren Jeffs (51), the leader of a Mormon sect group. Jeffs could get life in prison after a trial that threw a spotlight on a renegade community along the Arizona-Utah line where as many as 10,000 of his followers practice plural marriage and revere him as a mighty prophet with dominion over their salvation.

I followed this case keenly and am waiting for the verdict to see how seriously this matter will be taken. Why, you ask? Well, in many African communities, it is not strange to see a 14 year old married and with children. My mother was married off at 16. Yet the law regards anyone under 18 as a minor and having sex with her is constituted as rape.

Recently in Kenya there was a story of a man who was demanding bride price before the body of his late 16 year old daughter was laid to rest. The girl had died because of pregnancy related complications. When the media highlighted this story, there was more focus on the issue of bride price and less or none at all on the fact that the girl was actually 16 and married.

The two cases, the one in America and the one in Kenya, tells me that we are keen to make laws but unlike in the States, are not ready to follow through with the promise to protect children and in this case girls.

Jeffs was convicted of being an accomplice to rape. In Kenya, I wonder how many fathers would fill our prisons for being accomplices to a crime if the girls were willing to come and testify. The case in the US indicated that so many girls from this sect refused to come and testify, but it took one girl's courage to find this man guilty. The sad part here in Kenya is that the perpetrators of under age marriage and rape don't see anything wrong with it.

According to UNFPA most countries have 18 as the legal age for marriage, yet statistics show that 100 million girls will be married off in the next decade. In some parts of Ethiopia and West Africa, girls are married off as early as age 7. Because many married adolescents are pulled out of school at an early age, they may be unfamiliar with basic reproductive health issues, including the risk of HIV. Despite the large number of married girls, policies and programs often fail to address their vulnerability to HIV or other reproductive health needs.

Isolation and powerlessness pose additional reproductive health risks: Young wives often have limited autonomy or freedom of movement. They may be unable to obtain health care because of distance, expense or the need for permission from a spouse or in-laws. These barriers can exacerbate the risks of maternal mortality and morbidity for pregnant adolescents.

Married adolescents often face familial and societal expectations to have children as soon as they are married. Even if contraceptive services are available, married adolescent girls may lack the power to use them.

Teenage brides with much older husbands often have limited capacity to negotiate sexual relations, contraception and childbearing, as well as other aspects of domestic life.

While all this issues are facing married children, we have yet to exercise the power of the law that is evident in all the countries in the world and on the continent. To use the laws to safe guard the rights of the child and eventually her reproductive health.

I would like to end with this quote from the now 21-year-old victim of the case quoted above. "This trial has not been about religion or vendetta. It was simply about child abuse and preventing abuse," she said in prepared remarks after the verdict. And I say, this discussion is not about tradition and culture for the sake of it, but it is about preventing child abuse. And in case you didn't know anyone under 18 cannot consent to sex in the eyes of the law.