Peris Tobiko – Kenya’s first Maasai woman elected to Parliament once stated:” My elder sisters were pulled out of school and married off, but I was lucky that teachers intervened in my case I was performing well so teachers wanted to keep me in school.” According to the UNICEF, child marriage refers to any formal marriage or informal union between a child under the age of 18 and an adult or another child. Child marriage has become a global problem and denies girls their right to health, to live in security and choose when and whom to wed. Each year, at least 12 million girls get married before the age of 18. That is 28 girls every minute.
In fact, in ancient and medieval communities, girls would get married at or even before puberty. Early marriages and motherhood were common in Ancient Greece. In the Roman Empire, girls could marry from the age of 12 and boys from age 14. But most of the time girls would get married to much older men as the latter would already have enough wealth to establish a household of his own. As of today, Niger has the highest rate of child marriage in the world with 75 percent of girls under age 18 were married. Chad, Bangladesh and Guinea had rates ranging from 63 to 68 percent.
A sense of social insecurity has been a major cause of childe marriage across the world. Parents fear social stigma if girls beyond the age of 18 stay at the former’s home. In Bangladesh, for example, people in the community will gossip on girls who are still unmarried past the age of 18. Many parents also fear rape and if their daughter becomes victim to such a crime, then the girl will bring disgrace to the family and will no longer be eligible for marriage. Parents also fear that their unmarried daughters may engage in illicit relationships or elope and that will not be beneficial for the other siblings.
Furthermore, daughters are often considered as an economic burden and so, parents marry them off in order to be relieved from it. Some parents also marry off their daughters so as to ensure the latter’s financial security. Ellen Terry, an English stage actress, was married at 16 to George Frederic Watts who was 46 years old at that time. The marriage was thought to be favourable by Ellen’s parents but later she admitted that she felt uncomfortable being a child bride.
During wars, conflicts and civil unrests, girls become more prone to child marriage due to displacement, instability, harsh living conditions, threat to violence and poverty. So, parents marry off their daughters to protect them from potential violence, rapes or to ease financial stress. In most cases, parents think that they are doing the right thing by marrying off their young daughters, however they have no idea how this can have a negative impact on the child’s physical and mental health. Child marriage is a growing problem for Syrian girls in refugee communities in Jordan. In 2014, 32 percent of registered marriages involved a girl under the age of 18.
There are many more causes of early marriage such as money marriage where parents marry off their daughters to men to whom they owe debts. The daughter is referred to as the money wife. Money marriage is a common practice in Becheve, Nigeria despite being illegal there.
Child marriage may threaten the life and health of girls. According to research, approximately 12 million girls aged 15 to 19 years and at least 777 000 girls under 15 years give birth each year in developing countries. The main cause of death among adolescent girls below 19 is due to the complications that arise from pregnancy and childbirth. This happens as a result of the girls’ physical immaturity, that is, their pelvis and birth canal are not fully developed. Moreover, girls below 15 have the risk of developing obstetric fistula, a medical condition in which a hole forms in the birth canal as a result of childbirth. This health problem may lead to urine and fecal incontinence in girls. If not surgically repaired, complications include depression, permanent disability, social isolation as this can bring shame to girls and the latter can be completely rejected by the community in which they live. Married girls also have a higher risk of getting sexually transmitted diseases, cervical cancer, malaria than their non-married peers.
After marriage, the girl child has to move to her husband’s home and the couple may even relocate to another village or area. Large age gaps between the child and her husband makes the girl more prone to domestic violence or marital rape. This may be life-threatening for a girl. Due to the fact that the husband may be more than 10 years older, it increases power and control that the husband has over his wife. Sexual and domestic violence may have devastating psychological effects on young girls as they are at a formative stage of mental development. Nearly 39 percent of husbands report either sexual or physical abuse towards their wife. Girls may suffer from depression or have suicidal thoughts due to violence.
Child marriage often ends a girl’s education, especially in poor countries or places where the practice is common. After marriage, the girl is expected to drop out of school so as to look after her in-laws and have children. On top of that, uneducated girls are more at risk for child marriage. Without an education, girls have few opportunities to get a job and be financially secure if their husbands divorce them or die. In Afghanistan, even if the girl gets the permission to attend school, the school administrators will refuse to take her because they believe that having married girls in the school can become harmful to the morals of unmarried girls.
Nowadays, a lot is being done to prevent child marriage. On the 11th of October 2012, the first International Day of the Girl Child was held with the purpose of ending child marriage. The first United Nations Human Rights Council resolution against child, early, and forced marriages was adopted in 2013 and it recognizes child marriage as a violation of human rights and vows to put an end to the practice as part of the U.N.'s post-2015 global development agenda. In 2019, Mozambique's national assembly passed a law banning child marriage. This law came after national movements criticising the country’s high rate of child marriage with 50% of girls marrying under the age of 18.
Together, we must end child marriage, otherwise many innocent lives will be unnecessarily lost.
BY: Muhammad Farhaan Azmatally
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