In Niger, 75 percent of girls get married before the age of 18. Credit: Etrenard/CC By 2.0

By Souleymane Maâzou
NIAMEY , Jul 30 2013 (IPS)

For El Hadji Souley Moussa, a 60-year-old retired bank employee in Niger, “marrying off a daughter when she is young is a source of great pride. This way, she is protected from pregnancy outside of marriage.”

It is no wonder that a population and health survey conducted in 2012 by the Ministry of Public Health, and released this July, revealed that 75 percent of girls get married before the age of 18 in this Sahelien country of 16 million in West Africa. According to the study, young girls aged between 15 and 19 years are the most vulnerable.

In 2011 the United Nations Children’s Fund State of the World’s Children report ranked Niger first on its list of countries with a high prevalence of early marriages.“Socio-cultural pressures, particularly the desire to have a child before the first marriage anniversary often forces the young girl to prove her fertility a few months after marriage.” -- sociologist Salissou Habou

Yahaya Issa, a guidance counsellor at the Ministry of National Education, told IPS that parents who marry off their young daughters usually cite their religion as the reason.

“For us Muslims, marriage holds an important place in our lives,” Aminatou Abdou, 53, a housewife in Niamey told IPS.  She married off her two daughters at the ages of 15 and 16. “It is unacceptable for Muslim daughters to have no husband after puberty.”

Not all Muslims share this view. “There is misinterpretation of the religion. Islam advocates social wellbeing. This is why I am against prematurely marrying off a daughter because this has bad implications for her health,” Malam Issa Dogo, a religious preacher, told IPS.

“Those who marry off their daughters early do so because of ignorance. Islam is a religion which is against lack of knowledge,” he added.

According to Abdou Sani, an anthropology doctorate student at the University of Abidjan, people use religion as a false pretext. The real reasons for these early marriages are ignorance and poverty, he said. “In most cases, these young girls are married off to older people who are financially well-off or have a high social status,” he told IPS.

Early marriages result in early pregancies, which compromises the girls’ future as many do not go to school once they are of marriageable age. Medical sources indicate that 40 percent of young brides fall pregnant a few months after marriage.

“Socio-cultural pressures, particularly the desire to have a child before the first marriage anniversary often forces the young girl to prove her fertility a few months after marriage,” Salissou Habou, a sociologist in Niamey, Niger’s capital, told IPS.

According to 2011 statistics from the Ministry of Public Health, teenagers make up 19 percent of women of reproductive age and contribute 14 percent to the total female fertility in this country.

“Less than 40 percent of teenagers go for antenatal care,” Hadjara Tinni, a midwife based in Niamey, told IPS.

According to Tinni, because young girls fall pregnant before their bodies are mature, they are twice as likely to die during childbirth than women who over the age of 20.

According to the Ministry of Public Health’s 2011 survey, the rate of maternal mortality in Niger is 554 deaths per 100,000 live births – among the highest in the world. Teenagers account for 13 percent of these deaths.

“Survivors often suffer from illnesses such as obstetric fistula,” Hassan Idrissa, another midwife in Niamey told IPS. In April 2013, out of 163 obstetric fistula victims counted in the country’s six healthcare centres, 80 percent were married before the age of 18, the Ministry of Public Health stated.

“We must educate and keep young girls at school in order to put an end to this situation,” urged Hadiza Issoufou, a teacher and member of the Nigerien Association for the Defence of Human Rights.

However, the draft law drawn up in 2002 setting the minimum age for marriage at 18 is still being opposed by religious associations.

“The situation of teenage girls is a major concern, but unfortunately a large segment of the population is ignorant about the problem,” declared Dr. Makibi Dandobi, Nigerien population minister on World Population Day on Jul. 11.

Between 2001 and 2011, Niger’s overall rate of enrolment for girls rose from 29 to 63 percent, according to the Ministry of Education. Credit: Alessandro Vannucci/CC BY 2.0

By Souleymane Maâzou
NIAMEY , May 20 2013 (IPS)

A decade ago, less than a third of school-aged girls in Niger were in class. Today, though significant cultural and religious opposition remains, nearly two-thirds of girls are enrolled in school.

“Back in 2003, we had only 15 girls at my school, out of 150 students. Now, we have 103 girls out of a total of 175 students,” said Ibrahim Sani, who has taught for 17 years in the town of Agadez, in the northern part of this West African country.

This story is repeated in other parts of the country. Salouhou Adou teaches in a village on the outskirts of Tahoua, the capital of the central region with the same name: “When I came to Kollama in 2003, there were only 29 girls out of 113 students. Today, the number of girls has tripled, to 87 out of 137 students,” he told IPS.

The rate of enrolment for girls in Tahoua has more than doubled, from 21 percent in 2001 to 45 percent in 2011, according to the regional directorate for primary education.

Between 2001 and 2011, Niger’s overall rate of enrolment for girls rose from 29 to 63 percent, according to the Ministry of Education.

Concerted effort

The dramatic improvement is thanks to the combined efforts of administrative and traditional authorities, teachers, parents and civil society to raise popular awareness of the importance of giving girls an education.

“Our intervention has meant the gender imbalance in terms of school registration in our area has been reduced,” said Hadiza Moussa, a teacher in Téssaoua, in the south of the country where official statistics also show the enrolment of girls rising: girls made up 45 percent of students in 2012, compared to just 21 percent in 2001.

Weddings and baptism ceremonies are two occasions often used by campaigners to raise awareness of girls’ education. But some ordinary citizens have taken up the cause on their own.

“I have gone door to door to talk to families who were against education for their daughters,” Maman Zakari, a trader in his sixties in the town of Maradi, in the south of the country, told IPS. “I myself was against enrolling girls in school in the past. But I came to understand the importance of education for girls through public awareness campaigns and radio programmes.” He has enrolled two of his five daughters.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is also supporting various incentives.

“Teachers in rural areas who take part in these campaigns get some material support from UNICEF, in addition to their salaries,” Kadri Yacouba, director of primary schools in Maradi, told IPS. “And women who send their daughters to school get money to start small businesses.”

Despite the growth in enrolment of girls, there is still a large gap in school attendance between girls and boys. Between 2001 and 2011, enrolment for boys rose from 36 to 86 percent.

This gap is explained by the fact that in rural areas, many families don’t send their girls to school because of social and cultural beliefs.

“There are many parents who think that school is a destabilising factor for girls. For them, a girl’s destiny is to become a good wife to her husband and a good mother for her children,” retired school inspector Aboubabcar Amadou told IPS.

In both urban and rural areas, parents frequently withdraw their daughters from school to marry them off. “Even in families where the girls go to school, parents are more interested in boys’ education. Fetching water, doing laundry and cooking are still the daily lot of young girls,” said Nana Hadiza, a member of a cluster of civil society organisations working for universal access to education.

Setbacks

The campaign faced a setback in November 2012, when a draft law intended to keep young girls in school ran into strong opposition from the ulamas – Muslim clerics – and associations of Muslim women. These groups put pressure on legislators not to pass the law, instead sending it back for review.

The bone of contention was Article 14 of the draft law which stipulated that anyone agreeing to the marriage of a young girl in school without prior approval from a judge, would be liable to a prison sentence of between six months and two years, a fine of 500,000 to 1,000,000 CFA francs (between 1,000 and 2,000 dollars), or both.

According to the Muslim associations, this is not acceptable in a country like Niger where around 99 percent of the population is Muslim.

“Islam grants parents all rights and authority over their children. A father does not need a judge’s permission to give away his daughter in marriage,” said Malam Abdou Garba, a preacher in Niamey, the Nigerien capital.

“The draft law needs to be modified, to remove everything that is not in line with Islam. These articles could lead young girls to insubordination and disobedience towards their parents, and it could also lead many parents to refuse to enrol their daughters in school,” Mamane Sani, from the Nigerien Association for the Defence of Human Rights, told IPS.

But Hadiza Saley, from the “We Can” campaign (a movement of women’s associations in Niger which fights violence and discrimination against women), called for even more far-reaching legislation. “We must go beyond thinking about girls in school here, to include all girls. In its present form, the draft law discriminates against young girls who are not in school.”

It’s a trade that requires no capital, only courage and endurance. A group of 200 women are making ends meet – sometimes even a bit more – by selling sand.

They are known in Niamey, the Nigerien capital, as “takalakoyes”; the name, in the local language, Zarma, refers to the wooden poles, a calabash full of sand at each end, that the women carry on their shoulders from dawn till dusk.

Niamey’s takalakoyes supply merchants in markets who want to beautify their premises, and some goes to masons for small construction jobs. But most of their live in the city’s densely-populated residential neighbourhoods, where householders spread sifted sand over the courtyards of their homes.

The sand sellers all live in a community on the outskirts of Niamey. They have moved there from villages surrounding the capital in search of work.

“It’s not women’s work, but we don’t have any choice,” said Hadi Moussa, who hails from Karma, some 50 kilometres outside Niamey.

“When there are many mouths to feed and one’s husband’s income can barely even pay for food for the family, one has to do something,” says Fati Gna, leaning on a wall, visibly exhausted by the work.

Every day, this woman makes three to five trips into the bush to look for sand. “We do this work so that we can eat without begging. In the night, i come home very tired, and i find it difficult to sleep.”

The takalakoyes walk long distances to gather sand from the edges of farmers’ fields, from the banks of rivers or from abandoned gravel quarries. At each site, they can be found seated on the ground, legs extended, ceaselessly sifting sand.

Carried back to the city on foot, 20 kilogrammes of sand sells for about 250 francs CFA (50 U.S. cents).

“Look: all the pathways are covered in white sand. It’s these women who brought that here,” says Sani Maiguizo, a merchant in the city’s Right Bank market.

“The price is desperately low… yet, some unscrupulous people try to reduce it even more,” said Hadjia Haoua, secretary for information for an NGO based in Niamey who works against violence against women. “You have to support these women who have chosen the dignity of working rather than begging.”

The women go about their business selling sand without restrictions. “The city only taxes the big entrepreneurs and the truckers who sell sand. These women’s activities are negligible,” says Adamou Zada, an official at the 5th commune of Niamey, one of the areas where the women work.

Fifty-year-old Mery Abdou, a veteran of this trade, says the only difficulties come from the owners of the fields “They chase us away, they say we are digging up their heritage. With them, it’s always another story.”

The city may regard their work as inconsequential, but the women earn an average of 750-1,000 FCFA – between $1.50 and $2 – per day. Not an inconsequential amount in a country where people frequently live on less than a dollar a day, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

Abdou told IPS that with the modest savings from her trading, she had bought a cow and four sheep. Ramatou Ali, who has been working as a takalakoye for three years, also saved enough to buy a lamb. This year, she’s planning to buy a mattress for her daughter, who still lives in the countryside with Ali’s husband.