AFTER only one week of marriage, a 15-yearold girl of Kanyama in Lusaka has been withdrawn from her 16-year-old ‘husband’ of the same township because it is illegal for the two to tie the knot under Zambian laws. However, the withdrawal of the girl by the Concerned Citizens for Justice and Human Rights has not gone well with her mother, who has threatened to have her daughter’s pregnancy terminated should she return to her parents’ home.

The girl, a Grade Six dropout, who is one-month-twoweeks pregnant, was allegedly forced to marry her Grade Nine drop-out lover by her parents after they discovered she was expecting. The Concerned Citizens for Justice and Human Rights moved in last Friday to halt the marriage after the boy’s parents reported the matter.

The girl was taken back to her parents’ home by the organisation’s officials alongside the boy’s mother accompanied by a Daily Mail crew. Upon arriving at her parents’ home, they held a meeting where her visibly annoyed mother threatened to procure an unsafe abortion by using any means to terminate the pregnancy.

“I will give her a concoction so that she gets rid of the pregnancy. I was against this relationship since November 2018 but the boy was insisting and coming home whenever I was away,” Harriet Phiri said. And the boy’s mother, Theresa Phiri, said her son is still young and needs to go back to school. She said as parents of the boy, they believe it would be irresponsible for the two families to formalise the marriage by allowing the juveniles to live together as husband and wife. “Being a widow, I have no capacity to take care of my son and the girl.

For now, I think it is better to have the girl get back to her parents. We tried to solve the problem but emotions came in and the girl’s father chased us, threatening to beat us up,” Mrs Phiri said. But after being rejected by her mother, the girl, who earlier said she was not interested in the marriage, reluctantly opted to go back to the boy’s home on grounds that she had nowhere else to go. “I know I am young but I have no choice now but to go back and stay with my lover until I deliver.

I did not plan for this pregnancy even though I was having unprotected sex,” she said. She said her mother, who is equally expecting, would not want her to get married at such a young age. “My mother’s plan was to let me stay with by boyfriend until I give birth so that he can take care of me and the child,” she said. The boy regretted having made the girl pregnant because of not using condoms. “Condoms are expensive in Kanyama.

One condom costs K5 and I didn’t have that kind of money to spend each time. I will take responsibility of the child,” he said. He said he is not ready for marriage because he does not have capacity to look after his ‘wife’.

He said he wants to go back to school so that he can provide for his child in future. “I am a single orphan and depend on my mother, who is also struggling to provide a life for me. That is the reason I dropped out of school last year,” he said. And Concerned Citizens for Justice and Human Rights director Richard Nkhuwa said the institution is disappointed by the girl’s parents. “It is not right to force children into marriage regardless of the situation. Pregnancy should not be the reason they should be forced into marriage,” he said.

The organisation has since taken the girl to Child Protection Unit under the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services.