An end to Tanzania's child brides?

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00:00 Sporting her signature motto on her t-shirt,

00:02 "A girl with a dream is fire,"

00:04 girl rights activist Rebecca Gyumi

00:06 spoke to a room of young schoolchildren in Dar es Salaam.

00:10 She handed out sanitary pads

00:12 and spoke to the children about gender equality.

00:15 She's a leading voice in her country.

00:17 In 2016, she filed a petition to scrap legislation

00:21 that allows child marriage.

00:22 "It's important to stop parents from allowing their girls

00:27 to be married off at a young age,

00:29 but it's even more important to push the government

00:32 to issue a law which bans underage marriage."

00:35 In response to the petition,

00:39 Tanzania's High Court issued a landmark ruling in 2016,

00:43 raising the legal age of marriage for girls to 18.

00:47 But the government never issued a formal ban,

00:50 despite the High Court upholding its decision in 2019.

00:54 The authorities recently said that the government

00:56 was ready to start considering a bill

00:58 amending the marriage law.

00:59 But this has come up against resistance.

01:02 "We faced a lot of challenges.

01:06 Sometimes members of our community think Rebecca

01:09 is working for foreign countries to destroy our norms.

01:12 But we have to stand for our nation

01:18 and fight against the local ideology,

01:21 because we love our community and our nation."

01:24 According to the UN, around three in 10 girls in Tanzania

01:27 are married during childhood.

01:28 According to the UN, around three in ten girls in Tanzania are married during childhood.

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