Blantyre — Church groups in Malawi have protested that despite many programmes to sensitise people on child rights as provided for in the Republican Constitution, there is still rampant abuse of the rights of the girl child and women.

The Roman Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) and the Livingstonia Synod of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP), have mounted campaigns to rid traditions that enslave young girls and women into unwanted sexual and marriage relationships.

A social audit report conducted by the CCJP of the Mzuzu diocese in northern Malawi, gathered from parish committees, indicated that despite the fact that many Malawians were now relatively aware of their constitutional, human and civil rights, rights activists had not reached most remote corners of the country due to limited resources.

"We have therefore lined up projects to penetrate the far away places because abusers were taking advantage of the ignorance of their victims," says Fr Charles Chinula, chairman of the Mzuzu diocese of CCJP.

In some northern districts of Malawi, like Chitipa and Karonga, it was discovered through surveys conducted by the churches that a traditional practice called kupimbira, where parents force their daughters as young as 12 years to marry well-to-do older men, had resurfaced after it was abandoned decades ago.

Some parents give away their daughters after failing to repay loans, which saw one rich man in his late sixties, in Karonga, acquiring 14 young girls through the practice. Girls who resist such traditional marriages are threatened with death or magical curse referred to as chighune.

Another practice is elopement, locally known as kusomphola. It is accepted among the Nyakyusa and Ngonde tribes of northern Malawi. Here, parents of the boy eagerly repay, with cattle or money, the offended parents of the seduced girl.

There is also Kuhara (called chokolo in other regions), where a man can inherit the wife of a deceased brother to take care of her and her children. Church activists say this cannot be tolerated in the present democratic dispensation.

Northern Malawi CCJP parish committees are pressing their secretariat to lobby government to include in the constitution, a section that provides for security of marriages.

"We cannot watch people continue enslaving young girls in the rural settings for monetary gains through these bad cultures," asserted George Chizeka, a local CCJP member.

Traditionalists say kupimbira resurrected because of rising poverty, especially the famine crisis that inflicted Malawi in the past few years due to erratic weather conditions.

Loaning off of daughters was first brought to light by women of the Livingstonia CCAP Church women's guild, who provoked action by the congregation.

Livingstonia synod is the seat of the CCAP Church in northern Malawi.

The synod's Church and Society Programme director, Moses Mkandawire, said his organisation had already started conducting civic education in the affected areas.

"We are also putting up posters depicting the dangers of the practices in the face of HIV/AIDS pandemic," he said.

The Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC), a body mandated by the constitution to protect and investigate human rights violations, which carried out its own survey, have thrown weight behind the churches' campaign.

MHRC Executive Secretary, Emiliana Tembo, said although the areas concerned were the remotest parts of the country, where few people read newspapers or owned radios to access rights issues, they were determined to reach them and save the innocent young girls and women who could be suffering in silence.

"After our civic education strategy, we will start taking legal action against any perpetrators," said Tembo.