The Fight To End Child Marriage Begins At Home

Six years ago, I went to Kathmandu, Nepal, to spend half a year teaching in a hot and dusty classroom. I began each morning with a rudimentary attendance check. Supplemented with dog-eared English textbooks, my troupe of 12 year old students may have looked the part scribbling away at their wooden desks, but these children didn’t have much. For many, their school uniform was the only decent set of clothing they owned.

Over the weeks I was gradually able to put names to faces during morning registration. But there was one face I never got to see. Close to the front, a desk and chair assigned to a girl called Sonam remained empty. People whispered, and brows furrowed whenever her name was mentioned. Gradually, it emerged that Sonam ‘had been taken to India for a cousin’s wedding’. Some of the teachers around me grew increasingly concerned. Probing the issue further, I was shocked to hear that there was every possibility Sonam had been taken to India not for a cousin’s wedding, but her own.

Some months later, Sonam returned to school unexpectedly. Those who had known her previously said that something had irrevocably changed. Far from the lively girl she used to be, Sonam now shied away from her old friends, avoided eye contact, and refused to talk to any men. We suspected that she had been coerced into a relationship, but never found out how, and why, she had been allowed to return.

Unlike Sonam, there are many girls in the world who are married early, and prevented from attending or returning to school. The highest prevalence of child marriage occurs in West and Central Africa, and South Asia, with about 40% of all child marriages taking place in India. Almost 10 million married girls live in India alone. According to analysts, 142 million girls around the world will marry before adulthood within this decade if current trends continue.

There are several factors that may lead to a girl being married at an early age: research by the UN indicates that a child from a rural area is twice as likely to be married young than her urban counterpart. Girl brides tend to come from poor households, where education is inaccessible or deemed unnecessary. Often, marrying a daughter as soon as possible may serve to ease financial burden, or solve family feuds.

Whilst the specific circumstances behind each marriage may vary, there is one thing that is certain: child marriage damages girls’ futures. It leaves them five times more likely to die during childbirth than women who give birth in their twenties. It makes them vulnerable to abuse, psychological harm and perpetuating cycles of poverty.

What is being done to tackle the issue? Laws play an important part in laying the groundwork for preventing child marriage, but often fall short in spurring significant change. In Bangladesh, the state has committed to ending all child marriage by 2041. Yet, in recent days it has announced that it might lower the legal age limit for women to marry. In Nepal, though child marriage has been illegal for some time, there are currently over 750,000 women who married between the ages of 10-14 in the country.

It is evident that the state does not have all the solutions to this issue. Recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzay said,

‘Girls are less likely to fall victim to early marriage if they have quality education and a strong sense of their own value.’

Community action and intervention is necessary to change attitudes. As said by Human Rights Watch, ‘there is a great need for public awareness programming about the harms of child marriage, and further strengthening access to education and education retention programs for girls.’

Now, there are some organisations aiming to do exactly that. Here is a selection of some innovative campaigns to end child marriage:

1) #Selfies4school

This campaign was formed out of a partnership between NGO Breakthrough and the Vodafone Foundation. It aims to keep 25,000 girls in school, as well as raising awareness of early marriage among urban communities in India. For every selfie uploaded to its website, Vodafone will send 10 girls to school. Users can also access the ‘Selfie Wall’, a collection of selfies of all the people who have taken part in the campaign.

As of last month, the campaign had collected almost 2,100 selfies. It has drawn attention across Twitter, reaching an audience of celebrities and savvy social urbanites.

2) Girls not Brides

Girls not Brides is a partnership of over 400 organisations across the world that spotlights projects on ending child marriage.

This month, its blog features the work of the Institute of Health Management, Pachod (IHMP) in India. The institute designed a means of measuring self-esteem and self-efficacy levels of girls living in rural India. From their findings they were able to target children with low self-esteem, putting in place a series of empowerment projects, including life-skills training, educating girls and boys about their rights, and providing counselling. They also work with married girls and their spouses to raise awareness of health risks.

So far, the program has been credited with delaying the median age of marriage from 14.5 years to 17 years in the rural area where it operates.

3) The African Union’s End Child Marriage campaign

Earlier this year, the African Union launched its first ever campaign to tackle child marriage. Working with African governments, UNICEF and other NGO organisations, the campaign looks to end child marriage in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, Sierra Leone and Zambia.

The two-year project has garnered a great deal of attention on Twitter through the hashtag #EndChildMarriageNOW. It is currently aiming to encourage African governments to develop strategies to raise awareness of and address the harmful impact of child marriage.

Want to know more? Watch children’s rights advocate Angelique Kidjo talk about the need for campaigns such as this:

Do you know of any campaigns against child marriage worth talking about? Let us know by posting a comment below.