Perpetrators of forced marriages are the worst human traffickers

ZORORAI NKOMO

Forced marriage and bride trafficking are two terms that are frequently used interchangeably.

 

The term “forced marriage” or “bride trafficking” refers to a coercive marriage that takes place without the proper, legal consent of one or even both parties.

 

Its a flagrant violation of a person’s freedom and autonomy.

As always the norm, definition of human trafficking is always important to put the discussion in proper context. Human trafficking is unlawful control of a person for the purpose of exploitation.

 

Forced marriage is another form of human trafficking. Zimbabwe has not been spared from the vagaries of bride trafficking. In 2010, the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking cited trafficking in persons as the second global profitable criminal enterprise after illegal drug trade.

 

It has further noted that trafficking in persons is the fastest and growing revenue stream for organised criminal gangs globally.

Crimes such as rape, enforced pregnancy, torture sexual slavery and enslavement are associated with forced marriages.

 

Zimbabwe is among countries in Africa facing the problem of bride trafficking due to religious, cultural, monetary and socioeconomic factors.

A lot of countries are perpetuating bride trafficking whereby value is exchanged for a women. A classic example was China’s one child policy.

 

This policy created a gender imbalance in this Asian country to the extent that men were experiencing women shortage. The pressure to find a bride due to high bride price of local Chinese women made a lot of men to resort to buying kidnapped women from other areas.

 

This necessitated bride trafficking.

In Uganda, the Eastern African country, a rebel movement called the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) kidnapped over 60 0000 young children.

 

Many of these abducted children were tuned into forced wives. However, the current legal conundrum is that a marriage by means of abduction is not yet codified as a criminal conduct in international law.

Zimbabwe is among countries in Sub-Saharan Africa struggling with the ongoing pendulum of teenage pregnancy and child marriages.

 

It is a country which is in top 20 of countries with high prevalence of child marriages.

Child marriages and teenage pregnancy is rife in Mashonaland Central Province where 52%  of young women are being married before the age of 18 years.

Research from the Zimbabwe National Statistical Agency provides that over 30 per cent of girls under the age of 18 years are being married.

 

The research further shows that rural adolescence girls are twice more likely to be married before the age of 18. The constitution of Zimbabwe set 18 years as the legal age of majority.

In 2022, Zimbabwe witnessed the promulgation and subsequent enactment of the new Marriages Act.

 

One of the salient features of the Marriages Act is guarding against sexual exploitation of young women in Zimbabwe.

 

In essence the mischief of the act is suppressing and fighting bride trafficking.

According to data from World Vision, more than 650m women worldwide were married before turning 18 years old.

Additionally, it states that 12m  girls are married before they turn 18 years old, or over 20% of girls worldwide. To put this in perspective, 22 girls under the age of 18 are married every minute. This number is too much.

 

Majority of rural people and those in peri-urban areas of Zimbabwe are families which are struggling economically, they are people living in abject poverty.

 

Mashonaland Central is one of the provinces recording high cases of early marriages in Zimbabwe.  In such areas, families and adolescent girls use marriage as simple tools and mechanism to get out of their desperate economic situations.

A 2022 study conducted by Plan International in Chiredzi District of Masvingo Province, title, “Understanding Child Marriage in food-insecure communities in Chiredzi District, Zimbabwe” revealed that adolescence girls are being forced into sexual exploitation in the context of selling or exchanging sex to put food on the table.

There is close correlation between child marriages and forced marriages. Children who are finding themselves marriages before attaining the age of 18 are not wives. These children should be in schools. However, due to economic situation they drop from schools.

 

A lot of people take advantage of their vulnerability and promise to marry them.

They are people living without options but to go to anyone who is promising to take care of them.

Majority of those married before the age of 18 are vulnerable members of communities. They are school dropouts. They are dropouts not because they elect to dropout.

 

They are forced out of schools due to various factors, poverty being the main cause.

 

They are people which should be protected by the state. Some of them are heading families and due to economic pressure they are forced to leave school to fend for their siblings.

 

These are people who are subjected to hell while alive. These children are socially and economically left to be victims of bride trafficking.

In Zimbabwe they call it early marriage. Honestly how can we call teen marriage where a 60 year old person is taking a 17 year old as a wife?

That’s so inhuman.

 

The proper term for such people is bride traffickers. That’s a forced marriage.

 

Procedurally at law, people might say there was consent. However, substantively speaking these teenagers are being taken advantage of, they are being trafficked under the auspices of marriages.

 

The disheartening part is that some family members are accomplices in the commission of such heinous act of bride trafficking.

Victims of bride trafficking or forced marriages do not have confidence, autonomy, capacities and capabilities to determine and control what happen in their lives.

 

Negative conditions like physical abuse, harassment, exploitation, and mental and psychological torture are inflicted upon them. They experience cruel and inhumane treatment. Their dignity has been severely damaged.

 

The Zimbabwe Trafficking in Persons Act and the Trafficking in Persons National Plan of Action  should be recalibrated to include forced marriages and include marriage by means of abduction into the definition elements of trafficking in persons.

Zororai Nkomo is a Zimbabwean journalist, lawyer and social justice activist. He writes in his own personal capacity. He can be contacted on zoronkomo@gmail.com