Tigisi (not her real name), now 12, was forced to marry at age 9, but now attends a boarding school with the support of NAFGEM, a local organisation. Simanjiro, Tanzania. Courtesy: Marcus Bleasdale/VII for Human Rights Watch

By Agnes Odhiambo
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, Oct 29 2014 (IPS)

“You cannot continue with your education. You have to get married because this man has already paid dowry for you,” Matilda H’s father told her. Matilda, from Tanzania, was 14 and had just passed her primary school exams and had been admitted to secondary school. She pleaded with her father to allow her to continue her education, but he refused.  

She was forced to marry a 34-year-old man who already had one wife. Her family had received a dowry of four cows and 700,000 Tanzanian Shillings (about 435 dollars).

“I felt very sad. I couldn’t go to school,” she told Human Rights Watch (HRW). Matilda said her mother tried to seek help from the village elders to stop the marriage but “the village elders supported my father’s decision for me to get married.” Matilda’s husband physically and sexually abused her and could not afford to support her.

A new HRW report, ‘No Way Out: Child Marriage and Human Rights Abuses in Tanzania’, takes a hard look at child marriage in the Tanzania mainland. Four out of 10 girls in Tanzania are married before their 18th birthday. The United Nations ranks Tanzania as one of 41 countries with the highest rates of child marriage.

In the report, HRW documents how child marriage exposes girls and women to exploitation and violence – including marital rape and female genital mutilation – and reproductive health risks. It pays particular attention to the ways in which limited access to education contributes to, and results from, child marriage.

In Tanzania, girls face several significant obstacles to education. In addition to gender stereotypes about the value of educating girls — such as Matilda faced — discriminatory government policies and practices undermining girls’ access to education and facilitate underage marriage.

Marriage usually ends a girl’s education in Tanzania. Married or pregnant pupils are routinely expelled or excluded from school.

Tanzanian schools also routinely conduct mandatory pregnancy tests and expel pregnant girls. Human Rights Watch interviewed several girls who were expelled from school because they were pregnant. Others said they stopped attending school after finding out they were pregnant because they feared expulsion.

One such girl, 19-year-old Sharon J., said she was expelled when she was in her final year of primary school.

“When the head teacher found out that I was pregnant, he called me to his office and told me, ‘You have to leave our school immediately because you are pregnant.’”

A 2013 Tanzanian Ministry of Education and Vocational Training Tool Kit continues to recommend conducting periodic pregnancy tests as a way of curbing teenage pregnancies in schools. The new Education and Training Policy passed by Cabinet in June 2014 is regrettably silent on whether married students can continue with school, although it does make provisions for the readmission of girls after they have given birth and “for other reasons”.

Government use of the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) has a disproportionate impact on children from poor backgrounds and exposes girls to child marriage. The government of Tanzania does not use the PSLE as an assessment tool, but rather as a selection tool to determine which pupils proceed to secondary school. Pupils who fail their exam cannot retake it or be admitted to a government secondary school.

Parents who are financially able can take their children to private schools. But parents whose daughters have failed the exam and who cannot afford private school fees, see marriage as the next viable alternative for girls.

Nineteen-year-old Salia J. was forced to marry at 15 after failing the PSLE.

“My only option was to join a private secondary school, but my parents are poor. My father decided to get me a man to marry me because I was staying at home doing nothing,” she told HRW.

A lost chance for education limits girls’ opportunities and their ability to make informed decisions about their lives. Ultimately their families and communities suffer too.

The Tanzanian government needs to urgently develop and implement a comprehensive plan to curb high rates of child marriage and mitigate its impact. Such a plan should include targeted policy and programmatic measures to address challenges in the education system that put girls at risk of child marriage.

The government should immediately stop the mandatory pregnancy testing of school girls and exclusion of married pupils and of pregnant girls from school. It should develop programs to encourage communities to send girls to school, and to enable married and pregnant girls to stay in school.

In the long run, Tanzania should take measures to increase access to post-primary education by taking all possible measures to ensure that all children can access secondary education irrespective of their PSLE results.

Many girls HRW interviewed regretted not being able to complete their education and asked that the government take steps to ensure girls who become pregnant or marry while in school are not denied an education. Tanzania should listen to the insights of those who know best what is wrong with the system: the girls themselves.

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

* The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Seven percent of all young boys are married before the legal age in Pakistan. Credit: Irfan Ahmed/IPS

By Irfan Ahmed
LAHORE, Jul 16 2014 (IPS)

At first glance, there is nothing very unusual about Muhammad Asif Umrani. A resident of Rojhan city located in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province, he is expectantly awaiting the birth of his first child, barely a year after his wedding day.

A few minutes of conversation, however, reveal a far more complex story: Umrani is just 14 years old, preparing for fatherhood while still a child himself. His ‘wife’, now visibly pregnant, is even younger than he, though she declined to disclose her name and real age.

The young couple sees nothing out of the ordinary about their circumstances; here in the Rajanpur district of Punjab, early marriages are the norm.

Girls in rural areas are often given in marriage in order to settle disputes, or debts. Some are even ‘promised’ to a rival before they are born, making them destined to a life of servitude for their husband’s family. -- Sher Ali, a social activist in Rojhan city
Umrani’s father, a small-scale farmer, tells IPS he is “proud” to have married his son off and “brought home a daughter-in-law to serve the family.”

Similar sentiments echo all around this country of 180 million people where, according to the latest figures released by the Pakistan Demographic Health Survey (2012-2013), 35.2 percent of currently married women between 25 and 49 years of age were wed before they were 18.

According to the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, seven percent of all boys are married before the legal age in Pakistan.

Families like Umrani’s are either blissfully unaware of, or completely indifferent towards, domestic laws governing childhood unions.

Intazar Medhi, a lawyer based in Lahore, tells IPS that the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929 – which prohibits girls under the age of 16 and boys under the age of 18 from being legally wed – is one of the least invoked laws in the country.

While the Act is in force in every province, and was recently amended by the government of Sindh to increase the legal marriage age of both boys and girls to 18, it is hardly a deterrent to the deeply embedded cultural practice.

For one thing, violators are fined a maximum of 1,000 rupees (about 10 dollars), what many experts have called a “trifling sum”; and for another, the law doesn’t extend to the many thousands of ‘unofficial’ marriage ceremonies that take place around the country every day.

In a country where 97 percent of the population identifies as Muslim, few nikahs (marriage agreements under Islamic law) are registered with an official state authority.

Scores of married couples live together for years without any documentary evidence of their union, with many families preferring to avoid legal formalities.

It is thus nearly impossible for government officials to estimate just how many such ‘illegal’ unions are taking place, or to dissolve contracts that entail nothing more than the presence of a religious person and witnesses for the bride and groom.

Some advocates like Intezar believe the problem can be rectified by following the example of the Sindh province, whose amendment of the 1929 Act upped its punitive power to include a three-year non-bailable prison term and a 450-d0llar fine for offenders.

He thinks setting 16 as the official marriage age – the same age at which Pakistanis receive their Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs) – will make it easier for law enforcement officials to take action against those responsible for marrying off young children.

The government, he says, must also take steps to ensure timely birth registrations as millions spend lifetimes without any documentary proof of their existence.

Tradition trumps law enforcement

But for Sher Ali, a social activist based in the same city as Umrani’s family, a single law will not suffice to clamp down on a centuries-old practice that serves multiple purposes within traditional Pakistani society.

For instance, he tells IPS, girls in rural areas are often given in marriage in order to settle disputes, or debts. Some are even ‘promised’ to a rival before they are born, making them destined to a life of servitude for their husband’s family.

Various tribes also have different standards for determining an appropriate marriage age. For example, Sher explained, in some regions like the Southern Punjab, a girl is deemed ready for marriage and motherhood the day she can lift a full pitcher of water and carry it on her head.

In a country where the annual per capita income hovers at close to 1,415 dollars and 63 percent of the population lives in rural areas, girls are considered a burden and cash-strapped families try to get rid of them as early as possible.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to ending child marriages is the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), an unofficial parliamentary advisor, which also wields tremendous power to influence public opinion.

When the Sindh government announced its plans to extend the marriage age, CII Chairman Maulana Muhammad Khan Sherani denounced the move as an effort to “please the international community [by going] against Islamic teachings and practices.”

Comprised of prominent religious scholars, the Council has repeatedly urged the parliament to refrain from setting a “minimum marriage age”. Though parliament is not legally bound to any suggestions made by the body, many allege that the extent of its political power renders any ‘advice’ a de facto order.

Indeed, repeated assertions by religious groups that puberty sanctions marriage has led to a situation in which girls between eight and 12 years, and boys in the 12-15 age bracket, find themselves husbands and wives, while their peers are still in middle-school.

Speaking to IPS over the phone from Malaysia, Dr. Javed Ahmed Ghamidi – who is known as a moderate and had to leave the country after receiving several death threats from extremists – said that since Islam does not specify an exact marriage age, it is up to the government to draft necessary laws to protect the rights of its citizens.

He fully supports the implementation of a law that only allows legal unions between people who are old enough to run a household and bring up children.

“Such laws are not at all in conflict with the teachings of the religion,” he insisted.

Qamar Naseem, programme coordinator of Blue Veins, an organisation working to eliminate child marriages, pointed out that such a law is not only a domestic duty but also an international obligation, since the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted a resolution against child, early and forced marriages in 2013.

Supported by over 100 of the world body’s 193 members, the resolution recognises child marriage as a human rights violation and vows to eliminate the practice, in line with the organisation’s post-2015 global development agenda.

Various studies have documented the impact of child marriage on Pakistani society, including young girls’ increased vulnerability to medical conditions like fistula, and a massive exodus from formal education.

Experts say Pakistan has the highest school dropout rate in the world, with 35,000 pupils leaving primary education every single year, largely as a result of early marriages.

Slowly, thanks in large part to the tireless work of activists, the tide is turning, with more people becoming aware of the dangers of early marriages.

But according to Arshad Mahmood, director of advocacy and child rights governance at Save the Children-Pakistan, much more needs to be done.

He told IPS there is an urgent need for training and education of nikah registrars, police officers, members of the judiciary and media personnel at the district level in order to discourage child marriages.

Effective laws must be coupled with the necessary budgetary allocation to allow for implementation and enforcement, he added.

“People will have to be informed that child marriages are the main reason behind high maternal and newborn mortality ratios in Pakistan,” he concluded.

(END)

Teen mothers give birth to 81 out of every 1,000 children in Nepal. Credit: Mallika Aryal/IPS

By Mallika Aryal
CHAMPI, Nepal, Jul 11 2013 (IPS)

Radhika Thapa was just 16 years old when she married a 21-year-old boy three years ago. Now, she is expecting a baby and is well into the last months of her pregnancy. This is not the first time she has been with child – her first two pregnancies ended in miscarriages.

“The first time I conceived I was just 16, I didn’t know much about having babies, nobody told me what to do,” Thapa tells IPS in between assisting customers at the vegetable store she runs with her husband in the small town of Champi, some 12 km from Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu.

"When girls get pregnant their education stops, which means a lack of employment opportunities and poverty." -- Bhogedra Raj Dotel
“The second time I wasn’t ready either, but my husband wanted a baby so I gave in,” she admitted.

After the second miscarriage, Thapa’s doctors urged her to wait a few years before trying again, but she was under immense pressure from her in-laws, who threatened to “find another woman for her husband if she kept losing her babies”.

What might seem like a horror story to some has become an accepted state of affairs in Nepal, the country with the highest child marriage rate in the world.

On average, two out of five girls are married before their 18^th birthday. The legal age for marriage in Nepal is 18 years with parental consent, and 20 without, a law that is seldom observed, least of all in rural parts of the country.

Studies show that child marriages occur most frequently among the least educated, poorest girls living out in the countryside.

According to the 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), 17 percent of married adolescent girls between 15 and 19 years are either pregnant or are mothers already. In fact, research shows that adolescent mothers give birth to 81 out of every 1,000 children in Nepal.

The survey also shows that 86 percent of married adolescents do not use any form of contraception, meaning that few girls are able to space their births.

Disturbed by trends in countries like Nepal, the UNFPA spotlighted teen pregnancy as the theme for this year’s World Population Day, observed annually on Jul. 11.

“Globally there are 16 million girls aged 15-19 who give birth each year – they never had the opportunity to plan their pregnancy. It is a developmental issue that goes beyond health,” Vallese stressed.

In reality, teen pregnancy can be a matter of life and death. Adolescent girls under the age of 15 are up to five times more likely to die during childbirth than women in their 20s.

The number one cause of death among girls aged 15-19 relates to complications in childbirth. Young mothers are at a high risk of suffering from complications such as obstetric fistula and uterine prolapse.

Furthermore, “the first child born to a mother aged 12-20 is at greater risk of being stunted or underweight, suffering from anaemia or even of dying before the age of five,” says Vallese.

Less visible, but equally troubling, is the host of social complications that teen mothers must navigate.

“When girls get pregnant their education stops, which means a lack of employment opportunities and poverty,” says Bhogedra Raj Dotel of the government’s family planning and adolescent sexual reproductive health division.

According to the UNFPA, 37 percent of married adolescent girls are not working and 76 percent of those who are employed are not paid in cash or kind for the work they do.

Menuka Bista, 35, is a local female community health volunteer in Champi, assisting about 55 households in her area. Bista has been advising Thapa, to ensure that the girl has a safe pregnancy.

“Radhika (Thapa) is educated, she knows she needs to go to the doctor and eat nutritious food for her baby to be safe, but she doesn’t make decisions about her body: her husband and in-laws do,” Bista told IPS.

This observation finds echo in research carried out by various experts: according to Dotel, husbands and in-laws make all the major decisions about a woman’s reproductive health, from what hospital she visits to where she will deliver her child.

For this reason, Vallese believes it is important to train husbands and family members on reproductive health and rights.

Another problem, experts say, is that almost all national policies have been designed with the assumption that adolescent pregnancies affect only married women, with little acknowledgement of the fact that unmarried teenaged girls also engage in sexual activities, said Vallese.

The penetration of the Internet and mobile phones into every aspect of daily life, coupled with a massive wave of migration of young rural men into urban areas, has created “a significant teenage population that engages in pre-martial sex,” she stressed.

Whether the teenaged girls are married or unmarried, sex education plays a major role in decreasing the number of pregnancies.

Sex education is a part of the national school curriculum from Grade 6 upwards, but teachers are not trained, and are uncomfortable talking about it. When the subject comes up in a classroom, most teachers simply skip that chapter, or defer to a health worker to explain the process of reproduction.

“There’s a general (perception) that teaching about sexual health makes girls promiscuous, but we have found it to be exactly the opposite,” says Shova KC, chair of a local cooperative that works with women in Champi.

Public health experts, meanwhile, have criticised the government for not implementing existing policies that could spare thousands of young girls from the trauma of complicated pregnancies so early on in life.

For instance, “more than 500 youth friendly service centers have been set up but progress is about more than just ticking boxes,” UNFPA Assistant Representative Latika Maskey Pradhan, told IPS.

In the future, she said, advocates must keep a close eye not only on how policies are designed but also on how they are implemented.

Shirin Aktar, a young girl who resisted child marriage, poses with her mother outside their home in northern Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Naimul Haq
RANGPUR, Bangladesh, Jul 5 2013 (IPS)

Shirin Aktar was just 13 years old when her parents decided it was time for her to get married.

The eldest girl in a poor, conservative family hailing from the Rangpur district in northern Bangladesh, Shirin had few opportunities open to her: with no formal education or job prospects, marrying her 31-year-old cousin seemed her best bet to avoid a life of abject poverty.

The soft-spoken girl told IPS her parents never consulted her about their decision. Her father lacked a steady job, and the family had no home to call their own. Accepting the proposal of a relatively well-off businessman seemed to them the obvious choice for their daughter.

Unbeknownst to her family, Shirin had other plans. Determined to fulfil her dream of studying and going to college, the girl enlisted the help of her fellow members of ‘Child Journalists’, a group of local boys and girls who “oppose social injustice and raise awareness on children’s rights,” she said.

Sitting in her home in the village of Arajemon, located some 370 km northwest of the capital Dhaka, Shirin, who just turned 18, confessed that she had seen one too many female friends and relatives suffer dearly as a result of early marriage, experiencing everything from domestic violence at the hands of in-laws, to heavy loads of housework.

Shirin knew she could not go down the same path.

But standing up to her parents was not easy – it required courage, and massive peer support.

Reza, leader of Child Journalists, told IPS that despite being cognisant of the “consequences of meddling in adults’ affairs, we felt Shirin’s parents were doing her an injustice – we had to resist.”

The resourceful youngsters approached village elders, religious leaders, influential academics and local business-owners who agreed to talk to Shirin’s parents.

Still, this near unanimous support among community members would not have gone far without a boost from the Kishori Abhijan, or the Adolescent Empowerment project, an initiative of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Bangladesh that works to equip young girls with the tools they need to make their own life choices.

First piloted in 2001, the programme arose in response to the staggering number of child marriages in this South Asian country of 150 million people. Over half a decade later, the need for such a service is – sadly – greater than ever.

With roughly one-third of the population living on less than a dollar a day, it is small wonder that families turn to marriage as a means of social mobility and an escape from a life of gruelling labour: finding a husband for a daughter means one less mouth to feed and the possibility of financial supplements from the spouse.

Despite progress in girls’ school enrolment rates, a substantial decline in fertility rates and greater freedom for young women to demand their rights, many still find their lives constrained by the custom of child marriage: according to recent research, 68 percent of women aged 20–24 were married before reaching the legal minimum age of 18, while other studies indicate that a vast majority of these girls were actually married off before their 16^th birthday.

Government data suggests that over 50 percent of the estimated 13.7 million adolescent girls in Bangladesh will be mothers by the age of 19.

In rural Bangladesh, where poverty is even more widespread than it is in the cities, girls from poor families are considered eligible for marriage at the onset of puberty – meaning children as young as 13 and 14 years old often become wives.

Partly in an effort to bargain down dowry prices, partly to “protect” their children against sexual harassment, impoverished families seldom think twice before handing their girls off to husbands who are often much older.

Child rights activists say the practice is not only socially damaging but also hazardous to girls’ health: in a country where 80 percent of all births happen in the home without a skilled medical attendant present, young mothers and their children are vulnerable to complications during pregnancy and a range of associated conditions such as pneumonia and low birth weight.

Early child marriages no doubt contribute to the country’s high maternal mortality rate of 320 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared to 21 deaths per 100,000 live births in countries like the United States.

Now, a major push by locals together with international organisations seems to be bearing fruit.

Self-help groups known as ‘kishori clubs’ bring together about 30 peers every fortnight to discuss everything from reproductive health and nutrition to gender roles and violence against women.

Group leaders trained by UNICEF help facilitate the acquisition of life skills such as stitching, pottery making, or learning how to rear poultry, which improve young women’s chances of securing a livelihood.

Kishori clubs work with affiliated grassroots organisations like the Centre for Mass Education in Science (CMES), which operate in hundreds of sub-districts around the country and have proven invaluable in providing basic training in computer literacy and carpentry, among others.

The youth collectives also act as coordinating bodies for awareness campaigns that include spreading information about child marriage among their peers and throughout the broader community.

Shirin’s story is a testament to the power of these local groups: when her father first approached the local marriage registrar, he refused to register the union before first checking the girl’s birth certificate, signaling a turning point from the days when officials would not blink an eye at the sight of a teenaged bride.

But advocates are aware that education alone will not change the mindset that perpetuates this practice. In order to put a complete cap on child marriage, it will be necessary to change the economic circumstances of impoverished families.

Rose-Anne Papavero, UNICEF chief of child protection in Bangladesh, told IPS that the agency is working with the government to “provide conditional cash transfers (of 472 dollars per year) to poor families… if they agree not to marry off their (underage) daughters, not to use child labour, and not to practice corporal punishment.”

The positive impacts are evident: the 2007 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) reported that there has been a slow but steady increase over the past 25 years in the average marriage age, from 14 years for women in their late 40s to 16.4 years for those in their early 20s.

A member of the Mundari tribe stands amongst cattle in Terekeka, South Sudan. Many South Sudanese communities see child marriage as an important way for families to access wealth via the traditional practice of transferring cattle, money, and other gifts through the payment of dowries. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

By Agnes Odhiambo
NAIROBI , Jun 13 2013 (IPS)

Akech B. loved to study and dreamed of becoming a nurse. But when she was 14, her uncle who was raising her forced her to leave school to marry a man Akech described as old and gray-haired. The man paid 75 cows as dowry for Akech. He was already married to another woman with whom he had several children. 

She tried to resist the marriage, still hoping to pursue her dream of nursing. But her uncle told her:  “Girls are born so that people can eat. All I want is to get my dowry.” Her male cousins beat her severely and forced her to go with them to the man’s house.

But Akech fled and hid with a friend. Her uncle found her and took her to prison, where he told officials she had run away from her husband and needed to be taught a lesson. They imprisoned her for a night. When her cousins came for her they beat her so badly that she could hardly walk. Then they took her back to her husband. After that, Akech felt that she had no choice but to stay.

I heard stories like Akech’s over and over again from women and girls whom I interviewed between March and October 2012 in South Sudan, where child marriage is a problem of epidemic proportions.

Almost half of all girls between 15 and 19 in South Sudan are married, according to a government study. Some are as young as 12 when they are married. Girls who try to resist forced marriages may suffer brutal consequences at the hands of their families.

In cases documented by Human Rights Watch, girls were cruelly beaten, verbally abused, and threatened with curses, or taken to the police to coerce them into marriage. In some cases, they were held captive and even murdered by their families.

Many South Sudanese communities see child marriage as being in the best interests of girls and their families. It is seen as an important way for families to access wealth via the traditional practice of transferring cattle, money, and other gifts through the payment of dowries. It is also viewed as a way to protect girls from pre-marital sex and unwanted pregnancy. For some girls, marriage may also be the only way to escape poverty or violence in the home.

But the reality is far from this. Girls who marry young are removed from school, denying them the education needed to provide for themselves and their families.

Reproductive health studies show that young women face greater risks in pregnancy and child birth than older women, including life-threatening obstructed labour due to their smaller pelvises and immature bodies — problems exacerbated by South Sudan’s limited prenatal and postnatal healthcare services.

Child marriage also creates an environment that increases married girls’ vulnerability to physical, sexual, psychological, and economic abuse. This is because early marriage limits their knowledge and skills, resources, social support networks, and autonomy, leaving girls with little power in relation to their husband or his family.

There is increasing acknowledgement of child marriage as a serious human rights problem in South Sudan. The government has taken some steps to tackle child marriage by enacting national laws that have important protections for girls and women on marriage.

There are also efforts to improve girls’ access to education such as through an alternative education system that allows pregnant girls and mothers and individuals who have not had access to formal education, or who have dropped out, to continue school.

However, these measures are insufficient, and are often stymied by a range of problems and limitations. There are gaps and conflicts in the laws designed to protect women and girls from child and forced marriage.

Poor understanding of the provisions of these laws, which is exacerbated by lack of adequate training, poor coordination amongst government ministries responsible for protecting children from abuse, and lack of a clear delegation of responsibilities to specific authorities, perpetuates child marriages and violence against girls who resist them. It also undermines accountability.

There are a number of small ongoing initiatives implemented or funded by local and international organisations, donors, and the government that address aspects of child marriage. However, these efforts are sporadic, uncoordinated, and limited in scope.

As a result of these failures and inadequacies, many women and girls continue to struggle with the often devastating and long-lasting consequences of child marriage.

As South Sudan marks the Day of the African Child on Jun. 16 with the rest of the continent, it should take immediate and long-term steps to protect girls from this harmful practice and ensure the fulfillment of their human rights.

Only a comprehensive approach, which should be set out in a national action plan, will help ensure meaningful progress by the government, its agencies, and development partners in ending child marriage. Such an approach should include legal reforms and programmatic initiatives that address the causes and consequences of child marriage, as well as protection for girls and women who seek redress through the justice system.

It is important for South Sudan to take these measures because child marriage constrains the social, educational, health, security, and economic progress of women and girls, their families, and their communities. Failure to combat child marriage is likely to have serious implications for the future development of South Sudan.

* Agnes Odhiambo is the Africa researcher for women at Human Rights Watch

Laxmi Yarragantla, a 20-year-old mother of three, lives in the Warangal district, where over 50 percent of girls are married before they reach 18 years. Credit: Stella Paul

By Stella Paul
HALDIYAGANJ, India, May 28 2013 (IPS)

In the small village of Haldiyaganj in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya, 17-year old Injuara Begum is nursing her son who was born right here on the floor of her home three years ago.

She has never heard of Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY), a government health scheme that provides free medicine, midwife assistance and 30 dollars in cash to all pregnant women who deliver at a government hospital.

“In marginalised communities, early marriage is the only way to…ensure a girl’s physical safety.” -- Mamatha Raghuveer
Nor is she aware that marriage before 18 years of age is illegal and punishable by law. “My parents arranged my marriage when I was fourteen,” she tells IPS in a whisper – a result of shyness coupled with intense fatigue that has plagued her ever since giving birth.

Injuara comes from a poor Muslim family that migrated to India from Bangladesh in 1980. Her father, a brick kiln worker, says the early marriage was intended to “protect his daughter’s future” in this volatile border village where there are few opportunities for women beyond motherhood.

Injuara’s story is indicative of a worrying trend in India, where, according to a 2012 study by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 22 percent of women become mothers before the age of eighteen.

Research indicates that over 70 percent of these child mothers are from marginalised groups like the Scheduled Caste (Dalits) and other tribal communities, who comprise 24 percent of the country’s total population of 1.24 billion people, or refugees who have few economic opportunities.

Experts say lack of access to, and awareness of, health services compounds the problem.

Severe health repercussions

The exclusion of marginalised women from health services is holding India back from achieving the Millennium Development Goals, which set the target of reducing maternal mortality and achieving universal access to reproductive healthcare by 2015.

According to the UNFPA, 25 percent of the 56,000 maternal deaths in India in 2010 occurred within marginalised communities.

D C Sarkar, head of the Haldiyaganj Public Health Centre, tells IPS that most first-time mothers here are below 18 years. “Almost 70 percent of them suffer from low haemoglobin levels and weakness,” he said, which results in premature deliveries and miscarriages.

Since his own centre is ill equipped to deal with pregnancy-related complications, he often refers his patients to the district hospital. But it is an exercise in futility, since none of the village’s residents can afford to pay hospital fees.

Sunil Dhar, one of the leading gynaecologists in the northeastern region, says over 70 percent of his patients are from minority communities, while most are below the age of 20.

Drawing on his 50 years of medical experience in the border state of Tripura, Dhar told IPS, “Over 50 percent of my patients are as young as 14 and 15. Elderly female relatives, who want to know the health of the foetus, usually accompany the young girls who come here – but one look at the expecting mother tells me she is the one in need of treatment,” for conditions like jaundice, or swollen ankles.

He links poor health and early marriages to the socio-economic status of refugee communities in these northern border regions, where over two million people fleeing the bloody Liberation War in Bangladesh arrived in 1970.

The 1990s also saw an influx of refugees from Myanmar (formerly Burma) and the Chittagong Hill districts of Bangladesh. Still living in abject poverty in informal camp settlements, these communities “can’t be expected to go to the hospitals – the hospitals must come to them,” according to Dhar.

Further south, in the central Indian state of Chattisgarh, a Gond tribal woman named Khemwanti Pradhan tells IPS she was married at 15, and became pregnant shortly after.

A resident of the Sindurimeta village in the conflict-ridden Bastar region, she was forced to delivered both her sons at home because the closest health centres were shut when she went into labour late at night. “My mother-in-law helped me cut the umbilical cord,” she said.

An ongoing Maoist insurgency against the government keeps most people indoors for fear of being caught in the crossfire.

Though Pradhan was aware of the JSY government health scheme, violence prevented her from accessing the services. “Doctors and nurses will not work after dark because they are scared of the Maoists. No transport is available after four in the evening. If our men go out to fetch a car or a doctor, army personnel suspect them of being terrorists and arrest them for interrogation,” she lamented.

Integrated Solutions

According to UNICEF, over 52 percent of girls in the Warangal district of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh are married in their teens. Experts say the region is in dire need of targeted interventions that can slow this trend.

Here, an NGO called ‘Thaurni’ trains adolescent girls from vulnerable communities, such as children of migrant labourers, landless farmers and nomadic tribes, to become anti-child marriage campaigners. In the past five years, the organisation has stopped 56 child marriages in the district.

Still, hundreds of girls continue to get married every year because existing laws do not cater to their specific problems, Mamatha Raghuveer, head of Thaurni, told IPS.

“According to the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, anyone found guilty of planning or conducting a child marriage can be fined up to 2,000 dollars and also be jailed for a maximum of two years.”

But while this law has relevance for mainstream society, where families have other options, it does not address the specific problems in marginalised communities.

For people in dire economic and political straits, living in regions where rape and sexual abuse is rampant, “early marriage is the only way to…ensure a girl’s physical safety.” Unmarried teenagers face untold risks, including being kidnapped and sold to brothels. “We need a policy that focuses on reaching out to these people,” Raghuveer stressed.

According to Swapan Debnath, a local homeopathy practitioner and school teacher in Tripura, the prevailing “anti-immigrant” climate in India also forces many families to turn to early child marriages as insurance against deportation.

Therefore, policies to improve maternal mortality must necessarily tackle issues of violence and immigration, incorporating, wherever possible, cross-border solutions to prevent child marriage and early motherhood.

Debnath hopes that the Women Deliver global health summit, scheduled to run from May 28 to 30 in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, will provide the perfect opportunity to discuss such integrated strategies.

While activists and experts from around the world debate on what action can be taken, women in vulnerable situations have no choice but to rely on the support of their families.

At the moment, Injuara is happy that her husband Zakir Mohammed is not asking for another child just yet.  Since contraceptives and abortions are considered a sin, family planning means abstaining from sex – something that her husband has agreed to do until she regains her strength. “I am happy,” she says, “that he understands.”

Roughly 82 percent of Afghan girls drop out of school before the sixth grade, partly due to early child marriages. Credit: Najibullah Musafer/Killid

By Abida M. Telaee
KABUL, Feb 26 2013 (IPS)

In Afghanistan, the maternal mortality rate is on the rise; hospitals are filling up with anaemic women and girls; and in over 200 districts, high schools are devoid of even a single female pupil. These issues are not unrelated – they are all products of a grave social problem in this country of 35 million people: early child marriages.

According to Sadia Fayeq Ayubi, head of the reproductive health department at the ministry of public health, early marriage (of girls younger than 16 years) is illegal in Afghanistan yet girls as young as 13 are frequently married, often to much older men.

In 2013 alone, 53 child marriages have been reported, said Nazia Faizi, a representative of the rights department at the ministry of women’s affairs.

And although that number is less than in previous years, it does not provide an accurate picture of the situation since “there are more unreported cases in the rural areas where women are more deprived and have no rights or access to legal help”, Faizi added.

Child marriages are most common in four northern provinces: Kunduz, Sarpol, Faryab and Herat, where women’s “access to justice is poor”, she said.

Girls are coerced into marrying young. Many families consider it a matter of shame if their daughter is not married by the time she is 16 years old.

Sometimes, young girls are also “traded” in marriage to save family honour or in compensation for a crime committed against a member of the family the girl is being married into.

According to Sayed Salahudin Hashimi, a preacher in Abu Bakr Siddiq Mosque in Khair Khana, Kabul, although Sharia law allows the marriage of post-pubescent girls, the decision to take a husband lies entirely with the girl herself: she cannot be forced, and she has the right to reject the offer.

But while this may be the case on paper, the reality for millions of girls is very different.

Medical concerns

Nayela, a teenager hailing from the Sarpol province in northern Afghanistan, is currently in the Malalai Maternity Hospital in the capital city of Kabul for treatment of fistula.

A serious reproductive health condition arising during childbirth, fistula is common among women and girls who receive little or no professional medical care during pregnancy and labour. One of the most common forms of the condition, obstetric fistula, is characterised by an abnormal passage between the birth canal and an internal organ like the rectum.

Both painful and humiliating, fistula leads to a host of related medical problems including incontinence, bladder infections, infertility and kidney failure.

As happens with many victims of fistula, Nayela delivered a stillborn child and sustained severe internal injuries during the process. When it became clear that her condition would linger on, her husband and mother-in-law drove her out of the house.

Her mother subsequently brought her to the hospital for treatment, which involves surgery.

Dr. Hafiza Omarkhail, head physician of the Malalai Maternity Hospital where Nayela is now awaiting treatment, identifies fistula as a “rampant female problem” here, exacerbated by childhood marriages.

Nayela’s father died when she was very young and by the time she was a teenager her grandfather had forced her to marry a 40-year-old man, for what he claimed were “financial reasons”.

Now she is suffering the consequences, along with scores of other girls battling both the pressures of early marriage as well as a weak maternal health sector.

According to Sadia Fayeq Ayubi, head of the reproductive health department at the Public Health Ministry, girls are married off between 13 and 17 years, and are often pregnant between 17 and 19 years of age.

This statistic is put in sharper perspective when viewed alongside national maternal mortality statistics: one in 50 Afghan women is likely to die of pregnancy-related causes, according to the 2010 Afghanistan Mortality Survey. The lifetime risk of pregnancy-related death is five times as high in rural areas as it is in towns and cities.

But the survey’s maternal mortality rate of 327 per 100,000 live births in the survey area — which excluded parts of the country disrupted by conflict — is significantly lower than the 1,400 per 100,000 live births assigned by United Nations agencies and the World Bank for the same year.

Meanwhile, divorce rates, suicide and self-immolation are on the rise, said Parwin Rahimi, in charge of the women’s support department at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC).

In 2010, former Deputy Health Minister Faizullah Kakar completed a study based on hospital reports and Health Ministry records, which showed that over 2,300 women and girls in the 15 to 40 age group attempt suicide annually.

That same year, 100 cases of self-immolation were registered at the Herat City Hospital – 76 of those women succumbed to their burns.

Experts and advocates suspect that early marriages are playing a role in pushing an increasing number of women to these desperate, often fatal, acts.

Rahimi believes it is a “legal flaw” that girls can be married as young as 16 and allowed to start a family.

Most of these teenage brides face exploitation and unimaginable violence at the hands of their husbands and in-laws. They have little access to justice, and more often than not their stories go untold.

Child marriages could also explain the high drop-out rate for girls in Afghanistan – according to the international development organisation BRAC, 82 percent of Afghan girls drop out of school before the sixth grade.

The Education Ministry says the situation is worse in rural areas, where girls rarely manage to finish school. It is estimated that 70 percent of Afghan women are illiterate.

Although most girls are resigned to their fate, some fight back.

Nineteen-year-old named Mahjooba was engaged to her cousin when she was just a child. When she refused to marry him, the family became violent.

“I had continued my studies up to Class Nine. I passed an exam for admission to nursing school. When my aunt’s family got to know, they did not want me to continue with my studies. But I did not agree with their decision. I was divorced,” she said.

The AIHRC has been pushing for the registration of marriages in court as a solution to child marriages.

*Abida M. Telaee writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS.