Memory Banda: A Fight against Entrenched Atrocities
Written by Inika Choudhary | Edited by Amber Simnani
“I said no because I knew where I was going. I knew what I wanted in life. I had a lot of dreams as a young girl. I knew that one day I would contribute something, a little something, to my community.”
A life devoid of any personal identity, a life where she would have to dance to others’ tunes, a life that would be dominated by others’ choices — this is what Memory stood up against when she decided to say no to marriage — at the age of 13.
Memory Banda is a leading Malawian activist and global campaigner persevering against the institution of child marriage in her country. Born in Mzimba North on September 24, 1996, she spent her early years in the Chiradzulu district. Although she was raised by a single mother, Banda grew up in a close-knit community with many brothers and sisters. She witnessed around her how all of these houses had been victims of child marriage. In her own words, when girls reached puberty, they had to go to initiation camps, where they were taught how to sexually please a man. During these traumatic days several girls contracted sexually transmitted diseases like HIV and AIDS and ended up impregnated — just like her 11-year-old sister. While marriage at an early age had become a fact of life for her friends, classmates, and cousins, Memory longed for an education and a better life.
Thus began Memory Banda’s campaign to stop this harmful practice of kusasafumbi — forcing girls into marriage when they began menstruating.
“A hard thing to change, but a good thing to try.” This was 13-year-old Memory’s motto when she, with the support of the ‘Girls Empowerment Network’, approached her traditional leaders with other girls, several of whom were young mothers, in the hope of persuading them to put an end to this dreadful practice. Their resilience led their community becomingthe first to pass a bylaw forbidding child marriage.
She also collaborated on the ‘River of Life’ project, where girls shared their experiences, dreams, and the challenges they faced through art, storytelling, and poetry. This project later turned into the advocacy campaign called ‘I will marry when I want’, with women congregating outside parliament sessions that culminated in the landmark legislation which outlawed child marriage and banned the practice in 2015.
Their work did not stop here. They recognized several loopholes in the constitution itself, pertaining to the definition of a child. This was the beginning of another youth-led campaign that came to be known and supported not just in Malawi, but globally. A million signatures on their petition, along with the support of traditional leaders, several national organizations, and the First Lady herself finally led to the amendment being passed in 2017. Today, young girls have the blessing of living in a very different Malawi, one where the legal age of marriage has been changed from 15 to 18, and where they are given the choice to wait to get married.
Memory, now a 26 years old, is the founder and Executive Director of the Foundation for Girls Leadership (F4GL Malawi), a non-profit that promotes equal access to rights, equality, and education for women. She is a recipient of the International Youth Student Award, the UN’s Young Activist Award, and a nominee for the Kids Rights Prize Award. She promotes women’s rights as a member of the Pan African Young Speakers and Activists group and other speakers bureaus. Furthermore, she starred in the documentary ‘Bigger Than Us’, where young activists from all around the world got to exhibit the change they’ve brought in their communities through their relentless attitude. She is also a Gates Foundation Goalkeeper for the Global Goals, an honor bestowed on leaders addressing the world’s greatest challenges.
“I firmly believe that it does not matter where one is born; we are all global citizens promised the same rights. And we must join together as one community to protect our fundamental freedoms and to call on world leaders to ensure that we are living in an equal, safe society.”
- Memory Banda (Geneva Summit, 2020)
Memory continues to promote her vision of equality and works tirelessly to raise awareness and ensure that village chiefs ban child marriage, end sexual initiation practices, enable girls to finish school and live safe from violence in a country where more than half of girls are married as children. She advocates that prioritizing girls and women is one of the most fundamentally sound methods of changing our world for the better, because empowered girls and women help raise living standards for the entire society.
(2015) Memory Banda: A Warrior’s Cry against Child Marriage. TED on Youtube.
https://youtu.be/xkFTZcUPjBg
(2017) Memory Banda| Outlawing Child Marriage in Malawi. Oslo Freedom Forum on Youtube.
https://youtu.be/5p6cbRuvUro
(2020) Memory Banda at the 2020 Geneva Summit for Human Rights. Geneva Summit on Youtube.
https://youtu.be/0ik6ooI_lKo
Kasalika, J. (2016). Memory Banda: Advocating girls’ rights. The Nation.
https://mwnation.com/memory-banda-advocating-girls-rights/
Wolpow, N. (2015). Why Memory Banda Wouldn’t Marry at 13. Refinery29.
https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2015/07/90348/memory-banda-child-marriage-ted-talk
Child Marriage and Exploitation: Memory Banda’s Story. World Identity Network.
https://win.systems/stories/memory-banda/
Memory Banda. Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy. https://genevasummit.org/speaker/memory-banda/
