Our website uses cookies to improve your experience. To make optimal use of this website please agree to our cookie policy.
A human rights-based approach to early marriage in Tanzania
Tanzania has one of the world’s highest child marriage prevalence rates, nearing or surpassing 50% in some of the country’s regions, despite decades-long legislative campaigns seeking to outlaw the practice internationally and domestically. From 2020 and 2022, Mzumbe University (Tanzania) and the University of Antwerp (Belgium) ran a joint action research project on a human rights-based approach to health challenges associated with child marriages in Tanzania). Empirical socio-legal research was undertaken in Dodoma Region to better understand the dynamics associated with child marriages in Tanzania.
The VLIR-UOS South Initiative project on the health implications of child marriages in Tanzania has identified a number of risk factors, which range from gender discrimination in the society and the gendered provisions in the law allowing girls under the age of 18 to get married with parental consent to underlying socioeconomic determinants such as a lack of access to educational and economic opportunities as well as to everyday resources. It also invites reflection on the way child abolition strategies are conceived and implemented, and necessitates further research on the exacerbating risks of climate change, and the potentially positive role that customs and traditions may play.
Speakers
prof Seraphina Bakta, Mzumbe University, Dean; prof Gamze Erdem Türkelli, University of Antwerp, associate research professor; prof Wouter Vandenhole, full professor of human rights and children’s rights law
Please register here to attend to this Community Talk