Steps for ending child marriage

Civil society organisations, youth activists and democracystates meet to scrapchild marriage.

What do May from Vietnam, Rangina from Afghanistan and Melka from Ethiopia – three girls from three very(prenominal)different countries –  have in common?

All of them were still children when they got married.

Melka was 14 the day she came classfrom school to be told that she was getting married, that evening, to a much onetime(a)man.

Rangina was 13 when her father forced her to marry, in an exchange that gained him a new wife. She was bullied and beaten by her in-laws, but did eventually managed to escape.

May was 12 when she was kidnapped on her way home from school. Her kidnapper’s parents brought alcohol and money to her brother’s house. at one timeher brother had accepted the price, May became her kidnapper’s wife.

Unfortunately, these stories atomic number 18repeated passimthe world.

Every year, 14 million girls around the world will be hook up withbefore they turn 18. One in 7girls in the developing world will be married before they atomic number 1815.

Being married as children has a devastateimpact on girls’ lives: as many are takenout of school when they are married, they lose their chance at an education, reducing their chances of lifting themselves out of poverty.

A lack of knowledge and power when it comes to negotiating grammatical genderand safe knowledgeablepractices leaves them vulnerable to contracting HIV/AIDS and other sexual diseases.

Giving relationshiptoo young is both dangerous and traumatising. A girl giving birth before she is 15 is quintuplettimes more in all likelihoodto die giving birth than a woman in her twenties. Complications arising from pregnancy and childbirth are the number one killer of girls aged 15 – 19.

All this without as yetmentioning the obvious – that these girls puddletheir childhood taken away from them and are thrust in an adult world, exposed to higher risks of insultand violence.

Instead of being given the chance to be girls, they are forced to get hitched withsomeone whom they did nonchoose and sometimes never knew at all.

However, it isn’t providedthe girls themselves who are affected. Child marriage has an impact on societies as a whole.

The children of child brides are more presumableto die young, as mortality rates of children whose mothers have at least seven years groomingis 58 per centimeless than for those whose mothers had no education.

In being taken out of school, it is nononly girls who suffer but their families. Women are more likely than men to reinvest their income in their family, and every extra year of education is estimated to increase a girl’s potential future income by 15 to 25 per cent.

Last week, children’s charity Plan UK, and the Royal Commonwealth Society (RCS) hosted a roundtable discussion, in the Canadian High Commission in London, on closingchild marriage.

The two organisations that have beenworkson the issue in partnership since 2010.

They were joined by Girls Not Brides, Forward UK and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Also kick inwas Mary, from Malawi, who talked to participants about what happened to her friend Alice when she was forced to marry at 15.

Speaking at the event, the High Commissioner for Canada, Graham Campbell, said: “Our collective voices and actions postcreate a start to put this practice behind us. It’s time for the Commonwealth to take up this issue and demonstrate leadership.”

The Commonwealth statesmakea commitment at their heads of government meeting in 2011 to put an finisto child marriage.

But they can do more.

The tossof Plan UK Nazma Kabir, discussed how the Commonwealth states could also push the issue at the United Nations: for instance supporting a UN resolution to end child marriage by 2015.

They could also ensure that the UNsecretariatputs the issue of child marriage at the heart of the exploitationagenda.

The key will be to transform their commitment into a plan of action. There are 54 states in the Commonwealth, and they could move ina big difference to the lives of thousands of girls by on the job(p)togetheron this issue.

The momentum to end child marriage is building, as is awareness around the issue, and ending child marriage by 2030 has been proposed as a post Millenium Development goal.

And not only at international organisation level.

Citizens and organisations working together have been changing attitudes on the ground to child marriage.

In Senegal, for instance, 427 communities pledged to countermandchild marriage.

Farheea from Pakistan told the audience what young people are doing to ending child marriage; for example raising awareness in their communities with parents, children and others.

By working together, societies can create a culture where girls are not wives or mothers or dead before their time, but kind ofstay in education, learn skills and grow – in short, where girls can stay girls.

 

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Materials taken from Womens Views on News