How Case Of 9-Years-Old Girl Who Got Impregnated But Successfully Delivered Has Started A …

9-Years-Old Girl – The case of a nine year old girl who got impregnated and later gave birth successfully may have started a revolution on how to curb the issue of child marriages with all its consequences.

Hers is one in the several disturbing trends in which underage girls are being given out in marriage, with consequences in the  African country of Zimbabwe.

The Zimbabwe Gender Commission (ZGC) which conducted a survey on child marriages has come out to say the matter requires urgent and drastic action from the authorities, a report in the Newsday says.

The survey, whose results were released last week, showed that areas with a high concentration of illegal gold miners have the highest number of child marriages and teenage pregnancies in the country.

And this is happening despite that the government had lauched a national action plan on ending child marriages.

9-Years-Old Girl 2  One out of three girls in the country will be married before their 18^th birthday, the report says, while also establishing a relationship between teenage pregnancies and poverty on the one hand, and also poverty and teen marriages.

Being financially underprivileged, the report inferred, tended to expose the girls to abuse.

ZGC chairperson Margaret Mukahanana-Sangarwe said gold panners lure young girls with luxuries and money in return for sex.

“Poverty was cited as a major push factor which made the girls vulnerable resulting in children running away from their homes. Parents in the area were not valuing education,” she said at the launch of the report.

Mashonaland East province’s Mudzi district, Umzingwane district in Matabeleland South, and Gweru in the Midlands were mentioned in the report as areas with high prevalence of the ill.

9-Years-Old Girl 3  “In Mashonaland East — Mudzi district, Ward 13, 14, 18, and 15 are considered hotspots for child marriages and sexual exploitation mainly due to illegal gold panning activities in these areas. The gold panners lure young girls with ‘nice things’ and end up impregnating them.”

“In Matabeleland South — Umzingwane district, teen pregnancies are usually a result of child marriages by gold miners who engage in sexual relationships with girls and young women.”

“In the Midlands province, Gweru rural district areas such as St Faith and Shamrock are popular gold panning areas and children as young as 13 years are involved in sex work.”, the report said.

It is on the heels of reports of two nine-year-old girls that got pregnant — one of them having since given birth, even as a lot of our young girls are being left behind.

9-Years-Old Girl 4  An International Monetary Fund (IMF) study says the Zimbabwean economy grew by 6.1 per cent last year on the back of agricultural production, high commodity prices and effective capacity utilization in the manufacturing sector, but these positives are dodged by serious economic contractions of the previous two years.

From another dimension, the fund expects that current account surplus would decline over the medium term in 2022 on account of the after effects of Covid -19 and also protracted drought.

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The country is believed to have the highest number of food-insecure population in the whole of the East African region, with nearly 2.4 million people are in Crisis or Emergency. In fact, three Zimbabwean districts were classified in Emergency, according to a report by Humanitarian Response.