For over three years, Acholi Council of Chiefs worked on matters of major concern to review and ratify the Marriage Principles, pronouncement against teenage pregnancy and towards second chance education for girls 

The Acholi Cultural Institution convened a meeting for the council of chiefs that reviewed and ratified the Marriage principles with the ultimate intention to prevent child marriage and marriage related Gender Based Violence. 

The meeting discussed the exorbitant cost of marriage which is stemming from adulterations in culture and greed. This very high cost is seen to be fueling domestic strife among married couples hence pushing up the numbers of GBV cases in multiple ways. Because of unaffordability of marriage, many couples do cohabit with all its limitations, many men are sometimes forced to borrow money which later ends up into conflict. So much resources are devoted to marriage leaving the couples with very little to sustain life after the ceremony. A  sense of ownership builds with paying of very high bride prices and this makes some men treat women as properties. A woman’s voice also dwindles since a high bride price has been paid to marry her & her which silence breeds more violence. The Chiefs therefore set a standard modest prize in appreciation & honour of the bride’s parents or kins as part of the marriage ritual to make marriage affordable and to retract the notion that marriage is buying of a women: Additionally,  intended to ensure harmony and to encourage many couples to marry and live responsibly.

The Chiefs also resolved to outlaw, “Obal kwan” which had increasingly been included as part of the items that the groom has to pay especially when marrying a girl of school going age. It is cost paid for disrupting the girl’s education. This encourages child marriages since many men go for young school girls very confident that they will pay for the disruption of their education during marriage without consideration of the age of adulthood or other implications that this may have on the health of the girl and her future. 

The Chiefs also pronounced the acceptable age of marriage to be 18 years and above in conformity with the legal age of adulthood. This is intended to prevent people from disguising behind culture to perpetrate violence and also to commit crimes. They believe that this will serve as a deterrent to child marriages as culprits will not have backing from cultural leaderships.

The ratification meeting also highlighted the need to give second chance education to girls who unfortunately fall victims to teenage pregnancy. This category of girls are more vulnerable to GBV than the others due to the overwhelming circumstances that surround them. Education therefore empowers them to be assertive, more enlightened and economically stable all of which reduces their vulnerability to violence.

Ultimately, these principles are in the process of being codified into a booklet that will be multiplied and disseminated for use across the entire Acholi Sub-region. This will serve as a reference material for whoever intends to marry and this is hoped to significantly contribute towards the reduction and eventually the ending of child marriage and foster harmony in marriages in the region.

The opening talk is part of the annual IMAGENU workshop. Please write to korsbaek@cas.au.dk to get the zoom link.