CHILD BRIDES
Every minute, around the world, 28 underage girls are wed against their will. MiNDFOOD goes behind the veil to investigate why so many parents are still giving up their children to marriage.
Every minute, around the world, 28 underage girls are wed against their will. MiNDFOOD goes behind the veil.
Grace Mwanga, 22, knows she is a very lucky young woman. “When I wake up every morning, I thank God for what I have achieved,” she tells MiNDFOOD via a ChildFund translator.
Having recently finished a catering course, Grace has plans to start her own business. “One day I will own a big restaurant and earn enough money to look after my family,” she says, smiling.
But things could have been very different. When Grace was just 13, her family arranged for her to be married. It’s a time she’ll never forget. “I felt bad. I was scared,” she recalls.
Grace, who lives in rural Zambia – where four out of five people live in poverty – had a fortunate escape. An intervention from ChildFund stopped the marriage. Grace’s parents were told the marriage was illegal, and it would place their daughter in danger. Alarmed at the close call, they pulled out of the arrangements. Grace stayed in school.
Millions aren’t so lucky. According to UNICEF, one in five girls worldwide will be married before the age of 18. While child marriage (also known as early enforced marriage) is declining, experts say it is one of the most serious human rights atrocities of the century.
But, although the situation is dire, there is still hope. “It’s something that if we put our mind to and we invested in, we could stop in the next 11 years,” says Hayley Cull, director of advocacy and community engagement at Plan International Australia – a non-profit organisation working to create a just world for marginalised children.
There is nothing romantic about child marriage – it’s not ‘young love’. The stark reality is that girls who are married young face an array of health and social disadvantages. “When a girl is married early she’s much more likely to suffer complications during pregnancy and childbirth,” explains Nigel Spence, former CEO of ChildFund Australia.
A startling statistic from World Vision puts this in perspective – in South Sudan, teenage girls are three times more likely to die in childbirth than they are to finish high school.
THE SAD REALITIES
For girls facing a forced marriage, there is a dual effect: the huge health risks associated with carrying a child before her body is ready, and the loss of education. “[Girls who are married young] do not get to complete their schooling,” says Spence. “Immediately that reduces their chances of good economic opportunity for the future.”
Grace understands the realities of child marriage only too well. Having grown up in rural Zambia, which has one of the highest child marriage rates in the world, she has seen many of her classmates drop out of school in order to marry. “What I knew from some girls who got married early was that it was very bad. They live in poverty and don’t look happy because they have children early, and sometimes they are beaten by their husbands,” she says.
“I expected and feared that I would go through the same. I thought my husband might start beating me. I expected to be unhappy.”
It would be easy to condemn Grace’s parents for their role in her near-marriage, but Cull warns us not to judge them. “Very few parents want this for their children,” she explains.
Essentially, child marriage is a response to poverty. For families living with nothing, desperate circumstances can make child marriage seem like the only solution. It reduces the number of people in the house they must pay to care for, and brings in a little money in the form of a ‘bride price’.
Tragically, child marriage creates a cycle of poverty that is difficult to break. “It means their kids are growing up in very poor households as well, so the cycle repeats itself,” Spence says.
But behind this, there is an innate view about the value of girls. “[Child marriage] comes from a deep disregard for the value of girls,” says Cull. “It’s happening because people don’t see value beyond them being wives and mothers. Girls are seen as a burden and a cost – not as an asset and an agent with their own rights.”
To address this, organisations like ChildFund and Plan International are working with communities to promote the value of education. “We work with parents, teachers and religious leaders to challenge the rigid stereotypes and roles for girls. We help them see how
“THEY LIVE IN POVERTY AND HAVE CHILDREN EARLY, AND SOMETIMES THEY ARE BEATEN BY THEIR HUSBANDS.”
GRACE MWANGA, ZAMBIA
extra years of schooling and marrying at an older age can unlock a better future for their daughter,” says Cull.
Culls also notes that in many communities, it is young women, advocating for themselves, who are the most powerful force for change. “I’ve witnessed some young women become really powerful advocates for change,” she says. “They will alert the authorities if they think an underage marriage is about to occur, or they’ll get trusted elders in the community to go and talk to the parents. They’re using community-based support to shift attitudes one person at a time.”
FIGHTING BACK
Albertina Simon, 22, volunteers for ChildFund in Lusaka, Zambia, as a peer educator. She tells MiNDFOOD that all of the girls she started school with were married early. “I saw that [child marriage] is harmful,” she says.
Through her role, Albertina holds meetings with people from her local community. “I talk with and mentor people in my age group about things like early marriage, early pregnancy and staying in school,” she explains.
She is frank about the abuse that befalls girls who marry young. “It’s the same as rape,” she says, her voice strong.
Ragini, 18, shares Albertina’s passion for ending child marriage. In fact, the two young women frequently echo each other when they speak about standing up for girls’ rights. However, the pair have never met. Ragini lives in Telangana in southern India – where, according to UNICEF data, about 27 per cent of girls are married between the ages of 15 and 19.
Through Plan International’s Girls Advocacy Alliance, Ragini holds meetings with religious and community leaders, as well as local officials. “It’s not easy to convince people to change their mindset – it takes a lot of effort. I am used to facing resistance from parents and community elders, but I don’t shy away from speaking my mind,” she says.
“Slowly, the change is happening. It will take time, and I’m not expecting miracles overnight.”
Women like Albertina and Ragini are driven by a personal sense of justice – but they have the law on their side, too. “In most countries, early marriage has been outlawed,” says Spence.
Although prosecutions are rare, the police play an important role in preventing child marriages from going ahead. “Sometimes people aren’t aware that the practice [of child marriage] is against the law,” Spence explains.
But the legal ramifications are just one part of a far bigger attitude shift. Spence notes that community leaders have an enormous influence: “They’re champions of change. That’s where a lot of the change is going to come from.”
Senior Chief Theresa Kachindamoto – tribal ruler of the Dedza district in central Malawi – is one such champion of change. She is waging a war against child marriage in a region where half of all girls are married before their 18th birthday.
Kachindamoto adopted a zerotolerance approach to child marriage from day one, despite major pushback from traditionalists. She passed new legislation that raised the legal age of marriage from 15 to 18, and fired male sub-chiefs who refused to comply.
Since coming to power in 2003, the 60-year-old chief has terminated the marriages of thousands of girls, allowing them to go back to school and finish their education. “When girls are educated, everything is possible,” she told UN Women.
CLIMATE CHANGE
In recent decades, we’ve seen the impact climate change can have on economically disadvantaged countries – but is it also affecting rates of child marriage? “Climate change is absolutely exacerbating levels of poverty,” Spence explains. “It’s reducing opportunities for economic development, it’s making farming and agriculture much more difficult. It’s having really dire effects for poor families and communities. We also know that poverty is the number one driver of child marriage.”
Crucially, the link between climate change and child marriage can actually impact all of us. Project Drawdown, a world-class research and communications organisation, ranked the education of girls as their number six solution for tackling climate change. When combined with voluntary family planning, it became the number one solution. And here’s how it works: girls who get a good education have fewer children than those who leave school early and marry young. So educating girls could have a significant impact on population growth – which would in turn directly affect climate change.
In fact, Joel E. Cohen, professor of populations at the Rockefeller University in New York City, says that putting girls in secondary school could cut expected population growth by as much as three billion before the year 2050.
“Secondary education increases people’s capacity and motivation to reduce their own fertility, improve the survival of their children and care for their own and their families’ health,” Professor Cohen told The Independent.
And then there’s global economics. A World Bank report from 2017 found that every year of secondary schooling completed increases an individual girl’s future earning power by 18 per cent.
Ending child marriage worldwide could therefore add $500 billion per year to the global economy.
The report also said that educating girls has a “multiplier effect”; not only does it increase the health and wealth of women, it benefits their children, too – boosting entire communities.
“The education of girls is an incredible catalyst for positive social change,” Cull says. “Educated girls end up being able to plan their families in a way that is … better for them. It turns out to be better for the planet, too.”
Back in Zambia, Grace is an example of what is possible. With an education and a certificate in catering, her future is now secure. “Maybe I will marry when the time is right,” she says. But now, with plans to start a small business, finding a husband doesn’t rate highly on her priority list.
“I thank ChildFund for stopping my marriage,” she pauses and thinks before continuing. “Let me just say, I’m happy to be alive and that I didn’t get married at that early age.”