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File photo: Presidencia da Republica de Moçambique
In a Children’s Day message, President Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique has called for an end to premature marriage in the country.
“This year, we mark Children’s Day with the motto ‘Let’s put an end to premature marriage’ as a means of drawing attention to the problem,” the head of state said. “Let’s make the family the laboratory that shapes the citizen of tomorrow, [in which children] have a healthy and undisturbed growth process.”
President Nyusi said that the government would continue to focus on education, training child development.
In Mozambique, half of women now between the ages of 20 and 24 got married while they were minors, 14 percent of them before the age of 15, according to UNICEF, which together with the government launched a National Strategy for the Prevention of Premature Marriages, which runs until 2019.
Speaker of the Mozambican Parliament Veronica Macamo announced last Tuesday that the Assembly of the Republic was contemplating scrapping a regulation that legalises marriages from the age of 16, with the aim of combating premature marriages in the country.
She believes that 18 should be the minimum age to get married, instead of 16—with the consent of the parents or guardians—as per the law currently in force.
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