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Pan-African Organisation for Research and Protection of Violence on Women and Children (PAORP-VWC), a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), has called on law enforcement agencies and other relevant stakeholders to strictly enforce laws that protect children from early child marriages.

It said early child and forced marriages undermined the rights of children, adding it was prudent for existing laws and policies to be rigorously enforced to save these children from the menace.

Madam Mary Agiiba, a Project Officer at the PAORP-VWC, was speaking at a workshop to school stakeholders on the existing laws and policies, which protected children from forced and early marriages and also seek strategies to promote child rights campaigns, in the Tolon district of the Northern region.

The workshop brought together traditional leaders, officials from the Ghana Education Service (GES), Social Welfare, the Ghana Police Service, the Tolon District Assembly and other interest groups to devise strategies to strengthen and promote child right laws in Northern Ghana.

It formed part of the PAORP-VWC’s three-year project dubbed: “Promotion of Protection against Child Trafficking and Child, Early and Forced Marriage in Northern Ghana”, being implemented in Tolon, Kumbungu, Gushegu, Zabzugu and Tatale districts, with funding support from KiRA Germany.

Madam Agiiba said for the girls to explore her full potentials, there was the need to intensify the advocacy in observing the laws to end child marriages.

Hajia Alima Sagito Saeed, the Executive Director for Savannah Women Integrated Development Agency (SWIDA), noted that educating the girls was critical to the development of the nation, and stressed on the need for national laws on protecting children to be strictly enforced.

Participants at the workshop pledged their commitment to join the campaign to end forced and early child marriages among residents to accelerate their growth.