ECOWAS member states have been called upon to enact and implement regional binding law to end Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and child marriage in the region.
A member of the ECOWAS Parliament from Ghana, Laadi Ayamba made the call in an interview with journalists during the ongoing ECOWAS Parliament delocalised meeting in Monrovia, Liberia.
According to Ayamba, Female Genital Mutilation and child marriage are some of the oldest cultural practices that violate the right of a girl child.
She said that ”Ghana as a country has made Female Genital Mutilation a punishable offence under the law but unfortunately, some parents send their children to neighbouring member States to get the procedure done.”
Ayamba said this can be stopped if all countries of ECOWAS make Female Genital Mutilation a punishable offence under their national laws, explaining that if a defaulting parent is caught in one country they can be arrested in another country.
“My constituency is one of the highest places where FGM is practiced and after the President has put in the issue of imprisonment of anybody who is found culpable, they started crossing borders again.
“They go to neighbouring countries like Burkina Faso and Togo to do these things so by the time you realise the girl is not around and when you ask around and dig, you will realise they have been sent to be mutilated.
“There is no particular tribe that has been able to come out and tell us that this is the economic sense for which we have been doing this ting or it helps the girl,” she stated.
Ayamba said; “The only thing we come to hear is that they are doing it for the girl child to be preserved for the husband to be and to show that she is brave.
“I am saying that we should ensure that we do a regional or a cross country linkage to make sure that if in Ghana it is a law against the practice, in Togo it should be the same thing, in Burkina it should be the same thing.
“And all ECOWAS country should have the same law against female genital mutilation so that if you are arrested in Ghana and running away from Ghana, if you come to Liberia you can still be arrested for breaching the law for the same crime. And if we do that it would help us a lot as a region to end Female Genital Mutilation.”
Child marriage
She said it is also important to have a law to stop child marriage, another impediment to the development and empowerment of the girl child.
“In the early years, right from the nursery to class three, you have a very high percentage of girls in class, 60 per cent as against 40 per cent in enrolment for the girl child. But when the girl gets to class three you have a lot of problems, the girl child would have been getting to the ages of nine, ten so they are economically viable.
“Their parents then use them for other activities, going to the market to sell then bring in money; all is not for any other reason but because of poverty.
“If there is education and continuous talk, parents will understand that if the girl child is educated, she will be able to get the parents more money,” Ayamba explained.
She said; “ECOWAS should go out itself, we should stop the talking and do the working. Let us get to the ground, let us get people to go out there to talk.
”It is time for ECOWAS, especially the gender committee to go out on a senstitisation campaign to communities to enlighten parents on the dangers of FGM and child marriage.”