CHOMBA MUSIKA
Lusaka
YOUNG people in Zambia and in the region have been advised to use their various social media platforms to advocate for positive change to make Africa and the world a better place, especially for children.
This call was made during the Southern Africa Youth Forum, online Southern African Development Community (SADC) model law on child marriages training.
SADC Parliamentary Forum programme manager for climate change, environment, health, sexual and reproductive health and rights Munashe Tofa urged young people to use their influence to advocate for domestication of frameworks that will help curb child marriages.
Mr Tofa said in a presentation that youths in SADC should use their voice to engage parliaments and influence policy reform around addressing child marriages and other social issues.
“We, as young people, tend to forget the power that we have, because we have the demographic dividend, in most of our country, we are the largest group.
“We need to use our innovation, our skills, to really advocate for the change that we want to see when it comes to issues such as these (child marriages and comprehensive sexuality education) and others,” he said.
Mr Tofa also called for domestication of model law on children, which was adopted by the SADC-PF in 2016.
“In most countries, it has been adopted… the prominent example is the Mozambique and Malawi case studies… they transplanted the model law into their domestic frameworks of legislation.
“The model law can be used by lawmakers to fully or partially domesticate its content,” Mr Tofa, a Zimbabwean researcher, said.
Various presenters, among them Watoto Africa Initiative founder Vivian Joseph, a child marriage survivor, urged young people to use their social media platforms to help protect children.
“Use social media to reach out to policymakers to implement the SADC model law,” Dr Joseph said… https://enews.daily-mail.co.zm/welcome/home
