Child ‘paralegals’ help stop rights abuses in Zambia

Child paralegal team in Zambia

16 November 2007: Child ‘paralegals’ are providing legal support to help end child marriage in Zambian communities and get their friends back into school, thanks to training from Plan.

School pupil Judith Mungaila from Mazabuka remembers vividly the first time she put her child rights paralegal training into practice.

"We were trained by Plan in 2005 after discussions about the many problems we faced, including child marriage and dropping out of school. After the training, which gave us skills to help us contribute to ending such abuses, we had our first case.

"It was of a friend of ours who had just been married after being taken out of school. When we talked to her, she told us she wanted to get out of the marriage and to return to school. With some adults who assist us in our work, we also spoke to her parents, who were not so keen to resolve the problem.”

Judith and the paralegals wrote a report which was sent to the Victim Support Unit of the Police, the chief and the Plan staff who support the paralegals team.

The importance of education

"Ultimately the parents were compelled to release the girl from the marriage and now she is back in school. This success has encouraged a lot of our friends to go back to school, as well as to join our group, which we call Child Paralegals."

The role of Child Paralegal members is to encourage their peers to be assertive, realise the importance of education or being protected and of participating in the development of their own communities.

Helping children know their rights

Judith is convinced they have already made an impact. She said: "We believe that the age for marriage must be at least 21 and we discourage our peers from going through Nkolola - a coming-of-age initiation ceremony for girls, which entices a lot of them to marry soon after.

"It also amazes us that many children do not know their rights. The good thing is that where there are paralegals, there are now fewer cases of rights abuses being reported."

Find out more about Plan’s work on child participation.

Read about Plan’s position on education.