When Memory Banda and her sister were children, they were so close that they were often mistaken for twins because they were only one year apart. They shared many of the same dreams and aspirations, as well as clothes and shoes.
Then, one afternoon in 2009, when Banda's sister was 11 years old, that close relationship was shattered when she was forced to marry the man in his 30s who had impregnated her.
“At that moment, she became a different person,” Banda recalls. “She became 'older' than me, so we didn't play together anymore. It felt like I had lost a best friend. ”
Her sister's pregnancy and forced marriage occurred soon after she returned from a so-called initiation camp.
In parts of rural Malawi, parents and guardians often send their adolescent daughters to such camps, but Memory's sister encountered one before that. The girls stay at the camp for weeks at a time, learning about motherhood and sex, and more specifically how to please men sexually.
After her sister got married, Memory, along with many of her friends in the village, wondered if she would be next in line to get married.
She said a strong sense of resistance began to rise within her.
“I had a lot of questions,” she said. “It was like, 'Why does this have to happen to so many young girls in the name of continuing a tradition?'”
It was a wake-up call for the now 27-year-old self-described “passionate children's rights activist” who joined the movement to ban child marriage in Malawi in 2015.
Although a law was passed prohibiting child marriage, enforcement was weak, and it remained common for girls here to marry young. According to a 2021 report from the country's National Bureau of Statistics, 37.7 per cent of girls in Malawi are married before the age of 18 and 7 per cent before the age of 15.
The causes of child marriage are multifaceted. Poverty and cultural practices (including the long-standing tradition of initiation camps) are important factors in the problem. When the girls return from camp, many drop out of school and quickly fall into the trap of early marriage.
Eunice Mbya, a social history lecturer at the University of Malawi, says that in the past, almost all girls in certain rural areas of the country went to initiation camps. “However, this trend is gradually changing in favor of formal education,” Mbiya says.
Banda's own grassroots movement began in 2010, when she was just 13 years old, in Chitela, a small village in Malawi's southern Chirazulu district.
Despite initial resistance from older women in the village, she rallied other girls in Chitela and became a leader in the local girls' movement to say no to the camps.
Her work gained momentum when she met Girls Empowerment Network, a Malawi-based nonprofit that lobbied lawmakers to address child marriage. She also appealed to the village chief for her stance, including training girls in Chirazulu district as advocates and enacting local ordinances to protect adolescent girls from early marriage and harmful sexual practices.
Banda worked with a non-profit organization on the “Get Married When You Want to Get Married” campaign, calling for the legal age of marriage to be raised from 15 to 18. Other rights activists, members of parliament, and religious and civil society leaders also joined the ultimately successful movement. Fight.
Malawi's Constitution currently defines a child as a person under the age of 18 years.
Banda's role in fighting against this practice earned her the Young Activist Award from the United Nations in 2019.
“Our campaign was very impactful because we brought together girls to tell their stories through lived experiences,” Banda said. “From there, after hearing the girls' depressing stories, many people wanted to join the movement and make a difference.”
Habiba Osman, a lawyer and prominent gender rights activist who has known Banda since she was 13, describes her as a trailblazer. “She played a very important role in mobilizing girls in the community because she knew that girls her age needed to be in school,” she said. Ta. “What I love about Memory is that years after the law was enacted, she continues her campaign for its effective enforcement.”
In 2019, Banda received support from the Freedom Fund, an international non-profit organization aimed at ending modern slavery, and founded the Women's Leadership Foundation, which aims to promote children's rights and teach leadership skills to girls. was established.
“I want children to understand their rights at an early age,” Banda said. “If we want to build a better future, this is the group to target.”
Although her nonprofit is still in its early stages, it has already successfully helped more than 500 girls facing child marriage avoid that fate and stay in school or re-enroll .
Last year, she shared what she's been doing with Michelle Obama, Melinda French Gates, and Amal Clooney during a visit to Malawi as part of the Clooney Justice Foundation's efforts to end child marriage.
“I have seen these three inspiring women from another world, and just being able to be in their presence and talk to them has been such a huge part of my life. It was a big moment,” Banda said. “I never thought I'd meet Michelle Obama one day.”
Banda was born in Chitera in 1997. Her father died when she was three years old, leaving her mother to raise two girls on her own.
Banda said she did well in school because she knew from an early age that learning was important to her future.
“My sister’s experience ignited my burning desire for education,” she said. “When I didn't get first place in my class, I always thought I had to get first place the next semester.”
Her willingness to speak openly during class, ask questions, and express her ideas proved essential when it came time to go to initiation camp. She refused.
“I simply said no, because I knew what I wanted in life, and that was to get an education,” she said.
Chitera women labeled her as stubborn and disrespectful of their cultural values. She said she often heard comments like: Your sister just had a baby, what are you going to do? ” Banda looks back on this. “That was what I was dealing with every day. It wasn't easy.”
She received support from her elementary school teachers and people at the Girls Empowerment Network. They helped convince her mother and her aunt that she needed to be allowed to make her own decisions.
“I was lucky,” Banda said. “If the Girls Empowerment Network had been established earlier in my area, things would have been different for my sister, my cousins and friends, and many other girls. .”
Banda remained in school and earned a bachelor's degree in development studies. She recently completed her master's degree in project management.
She currently runs her own children's rights nonprofit in Lilongwe, working with Save the Children International in Ncheu, Malawi. The capital of Malawi.
Although Banda has accomplished a lot, she recognizes that there is still much left to do.
“Some of the girls we were able to get out of early marriage ended up going back into marriage because of poverty,” Banda said. “They have no financial support and their parents cannot take care of them when they return home.”
She said child marriage is a multifaceted problem that requires multifaceted solutions such as scholarships, economic opportunities and child protection structures at the local level, which will “change the way families and communities view the problem”. Said it was necessary.
Banda is currently lobbying Malawi's Ministry of Gender to establish a Girls Fund to provide economic opportunities to those most vulnerable to childhood marriage.
For her sister, the first forced marriage did not last long. Although she remarried as an adult to a man of her choice, her childhood trauma hindered her education and ended her ambition to become a teacher.
Banda's next move is to establish a vocational school for girls through a nonprofit organization, aimed at providing job skills to those who, like her sister, are unable to complete secondary school. .
“All I want is for girls to live in an equal and safe society,” she said. “Is that too much to ask?”