No problem with bedding under aged girls? - survey

Plan International has claimed that 58% Harare and Bulawayo residents do not see anything morally wrong with men bedding underage girls.

This was disclosed in Parliament on Monday before the Parliamentary Thematic Committee on Gender by Plan International gender adviser Tinotenda Hondo.

"A recent study by Plan International in Harare and Bulawayo shows 58% people in communities do not see anything morally wrong with men sleeping with girls under 18 years," Hondo said.

"Of the men in the study who admitted to paying for sex, 40% had knowingly slept with sex workers as young as 11 years old, and only 11% knew that child marriage was prohibited."

Hondo said cultural and religious practices were some of the fuelling factors of early child marriages, where some girls were given up as appeasement for ngozi, as a reward to a good son-in-law or even after the older sister dies a young girl was given in marriage to take over.

She said most of these cultural and religious practices were done clandestinely, while some families were in the habit of protecting rapist family members.