Senior Chief Inkosi Kachindamato applied the country’s new ban on child marriage, which was signed by President Peter Mutharika in April. Now, citizens of Malawi must be 18 before they marry.
“I have terminated 330 marriages of which 175 were girl-wives and 155 were boy-fathers, I wanted them to go to school and that has worked,” she told Nyasa Times, “I don’t want youthful marriages, they must go to school. No child should be found loitering at home or doing household chores during school time.”
Malawi has one of the highest rates of child marriages in the world. 1 in 2 girls are married before the age of 18, a statistic that is closely related to poverty, as girls are married off to improve their family’s’ finances.
