Disclaimer: Content on the YP4 blog does not necessarily reflect the views of Young People For or People For the American Way Foundation. The views, ideas, statements or claims posted on this site by members of the public cannot in any way be attributed to either Young People For or People For the American Way Foundation.
Child Brides: A Human Rights Issue
Like most people I don’t think of girls as brides, unless they are wearing a costume for Halloween or a school play. However an article in the New York Times this week, “Tiny Voices Defy Child Marriage in Yemen”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/world/middleeast/29marriage.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=yemen&st=cse&oref=slogin made me aware that girl brides are part of the reality of several countries in the world, and that for these girl brides life is not a game but a painful reality.
The two girl brides featured in the article were 9 and 10 years respectively. What immediately stunned me is the role of the girl bride’s family in Yemen, the country featured in the New York Times article on this phenomenon. Generally the father of the girl arranges for the marriage and the mother and the girl bride agree to it as evidence of their obedience to the head of the family, the father. With my westernized view of family and traditions I just wondered how could a loving and supportive family allow their young daughter to marry an older man? How do mothers allow it to happen? How could a society tolerate this kind of relationship? I think it says something about women’s role in this society. Most child brides are women married to older men. It is the female who suffers the negative impact of the relationship. The problem of the child bride is a reflection of the larger reality of gender inequality in those societies where the practice is common.
Sadly there are many negative consequences of child marriage for these young girls. Girl brides are more likely to get sexually transmitted diseases, to be raped and sexually abused than other women in their society.Girl brides’ future economic opportunities are severely hampered because their educational opportunities are very limited once they enter into this formal relationship with an older man, who expects obedience, respect, sexual interaction and probably offspring as soon as the wife can bear them, or sadly even before their bodies are physically ready in many instances. In certain rural areas of Yemen, the average age of marriage for the women is 12 to 13 and Yemen has one of the highest rates of women dying in childbirth in the world. I think women’s rights and the fight against poverty are intertwined.
Child marriage is practiced in many different countries in Africa and Asia, and not all countries that allow this type of relationship are dominated by the Muslim religion, despite the misimpression that popular prejudices may give. For example there are countries in Latin America that also have high child marriage rates, like Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. http://www.iwhc.org/resources/childmarriagefacts.cfm. I was shocked when I found out this fact about a neighboring island in the Caribbean that I had just visited a week ago.
But not all hope is lost. The tide seems to be changing for the better. The story of girls who have come forward with their pain asking for a divorce, even when they may be risking their own lives with this action, will hopefully change society and peoples minds. See “Tiny Voices Defy Childmarriage in Yemen” The acts committed by an adult husband in the relationship with a girl bride are considered rape or child molestation in many jurisdictions. The international community should put pressure on the countries that allow girl brides so that these countries will change their laws and prohibit such relationships. Stealing childhood from these girls is a human rights abuse. The same way that child labor is prohibited and should be stamped out wherever it is practiced, girl brides should not be allowed anywhere.
.
- Gabriela McCall-Delgado's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Thought i would share... this is from an essay about a movie
In contrast to the formidable Faat Kine, whose character is very much echoed in Mason’s article, a group of scholars among them including Tamar Egger, Kate Kerr, Kara Major present a rather pessimistic view of women in their study called “ Child Marriage and Guardianship in Tanzania: Robbing Girls of their Childhood and Infantilizing Women” in the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law. Growing has a liner tone to it and it seems that when a person grows up they are expected to gain a higher and higher autonomy over their existence. In their article the scholars present the perils of early childhood marriage as well the making of adults through the custom of guardianships into children. The scholars write that “ In Tanzania, girls can marry as young as fourteen under the law marriage act, as young as puberty under customary law.” Obviously, this poses a very formidable problem in the subsequent education of these young women as well as their economic as well as social autonomy. The authors write that, ‘Guardianship laws permit men to marry off and inherit adult women, assume decision making power over their children and property.” These two entities, early childhood marriage and guardianship structurally guarantee that at every level life women a robbed of any possibility of economic autonomy. Example would be a young woman who gets married at a young age; obviously she does not bring an economic assets to the marriage and thus is economically dependent on a man who due to age can be assumed to die earlier than the young woman. However, when he dies the Guardianship customs come in and in the end the woman is robbed of the property as well as decision-making; things she would in some other countries be entitled to upon the death of her husband. However in this case it is impossible. The obvious injustice about these practices led to several measures that actually legally put a minimum age to the marrying of young women; which was seen as a developmental tactic because then women so that they could remain in school leading to greater independence depending on their education. Contrary to the plot in the movie, Faat didn’t experience of Guardianship; but she did experience a cultural backlash against having two children out of wedlock. Moreover, getting pregnant by her professor mimics the problems that are obviously part of the young-adult relationship found in early childhood marriage.
It is in every sense a human rights issue!!!!!!!
George N Mtonga
Child Brides
Thanks for the comment and the reference to the article. I found it very interesting and was not aware of the practice in Tanzania.