Brave Girls Rebel Against Child Marriage

Tags

child marriage, forced marriage, human rights

In many places around the world, child marriage is not only accepted, it is expected. In these cultures, it is routine for a young girl to be married off to a much older man against her will. Such an arrangement often results in lack of education, early childbirth, domestic violence, ill health, poverty, and a lifetime of dependence.

Why does the practice persist? A young bride is considered more likely to be virginal. Young girls are viewed as an additional worker for the family, as a means to expand the family, and to provide the social benefits of marriage. The families of the girl brides also gain social status, plus the economic benefit of having one less mouth to feed. A marriage may be arranged as a form of debt repayment or other type of business transaction.

UNICEF reports that 60 million children are forced into marriage, 50 percent of whom are in South Asia. In Rajasthan, India, 15 percent of girls are married before their 10^th birthday.

Even in countries where child marriage is against the law, the practice manages to thrive. Children face harsh punishment if they dare to disobey their elders. The threat of child marriage is enough to prompt some girls to run away and take their chances on their own. Others see no escape other than suicide.

A growing number of brave girls are bucking the system and trying to change things for themselves and for others.

• In 2008, 10-year-old Nujood Ali walked into a court in Yemen to ask for a divorce from a man three times her age. She told of abuse at the hands of her husband and his family. Her experiences helped spur Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries to become more vigilant about enforcing child marriage laws. Following her lead, other child brides have also managed to have divorces granted.

• In Bangladesh, 13-year-old Rehana Begum was about to be married off, but called on the “wedding busters,” a group of children working to end the practice of child marriage. The group appealed to Rehana’s mother, helped her understand the consequences to her daughter, and was successful in putting a halt to the marriage plans. Because of the wedding busters, local governments are beginning to create “child-marriage-free zones.” Enforcement remains a problem, but the grass-roots organization is making a difference. In the Nilphamari area, some marriage registrars have begun demanding proof of age for marriage.

• In the United States, the Girl Up campaign has organized 150,000 teens in support of girls around the world in an effort to highlight the problem of child marriage.

• The first International Day of the Girl took place in October 2012, with a top priority of eliminating child marriages around the world.

Each girl who finds the strength to fight child marriage becomes a role model to others. With each new story of bravery and success, another girl is helped, but it is not a battle that should be left entirely to the girls.

Local and national governments must acknowledge child marriage as the serious, life-threatening issue that it is. We must stop allowing “culture” or “religion” to sway our common sense. Forced child marriage is a tragedy of monumental proportions.

People everywhere must stand up in defense of the children.

---

This blog post was contributed by guest blogger Jason Tucker of Organic Development.  GJI welcomes guest blogs on topics salient to our work and mission.

Congress quibbles while victims of violence suffer

The twice-reauthorized Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA), a seminal piece of federal legislation that dramatically improved the U.S. national response to domestic violence and sexual assault, expired in 2011.  VAWA saves lives, deters violent crime and brings perpetrators to justice by funding assistance to state and local law enforcement and victim service organizations and creating a pathway to lawful immigration for undocumented survivors.  These lifesaving laws and programs hang in the balance as members of Congress continue to quibble over several hotly contested proposed revisions to the Act.  The Senate-passed Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2012, introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), would expand the number of nonimmigrant visas available to undocumented immigrant crime victims, increase the authority of Native American tribes to prosecute non-Indians who rape or batter somebody on a reservation, and prohibit discrimination against LGBT victims.  READ ON to find out why House Republicans are balking over the Senate-proposed provisions, and why VAWA 2012 presents a perfect opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to broker a post-Election détente.

---

Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization: Congress Must Display Bipartisanship, Julia Alanen, PolicyMic (November 16, 2012).

Archbishop Tutu condemns forced early marriage

Nobel Peace Prize laureate and anti-apartheid icon Archbishop Desmond Tutu emphatically condemns forced early marriage: “Coercing girls under 18 into marriage is as repugnant as apartheid and should be battled with the same vigour.”

READ MORE: Archbishop Tutu hits out at child marriage, By Susan Njanji (AFP).

Child Marriage: Britain’s Hidden Shame

Tags

child marriage, forced marriage

Image courtesy of Plan UK

Recently the United Nations Population Fund announced that by 2020 there will be more than 50 million wives under the age of fifteen. If the global trends in child marriage continue as projected that figure would then double in just ten years. Sadly, it’s all too easy to see this as simply a problem in the developing world, when the truth is very different.

There is no doubt that the prevalence of early and child marriages is highest in the developing world, with rates estimated at 60 per cent or more in some African nations. But it may shock you to know that in Britain nearly 10 per cent of marriages occur before a girl reaches eighteen. With a recent exposé by two Sunday Times journalists revealing that a British Imam was prepared to marry a girl of twelve to an older man, the reality of child marriage in Britain is starting to hit home. However, such incidents need to be seen as more than one-off sensationalism.

The British Government’s Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) is tasked with assisting the victims of child marriage in the UK. In 2011 alone the FMU handled close to 1500 cases of forced marriage, and a recent study by Farhat Bokhari revealed that 30 per cent of the FMU’s annual case load involves minors. If that statistic isn’t strong enough for you then consider this: the youngest victim was just five years old.

Bokhari’s study also indicated that the practice of child marriage in Britain was not simply one of Asian communities, as so often portrayed in the media. There were cases in the Jewish and Roma communities, as well as a substantial percentage of cases where the victim’s ethnicity was not disclosed. Like many crimes against the vulnerable it is feared that cases of child marriage are vastly under-reported.

On top of the illegal marriages that occur in Britain there is also a disturbing trend in the trafficking of children from the UK to foreign countries for the express purposes of child marriage. Many victims are taken abroad under the illusion of a holiday only to find themselves married off against their will.

The study ‘Breaking Vows‘ reports that girls forced into early marriage are more likely to suffer physical and sexual abuse, isolation and psychological trauma and also suffer from a lack of education. These consequences hold true if the victim is from Bangladesh or Barnsley.

Child marriage is a modern form of slavery that has harrowing consequences for individual victims and future generations. Only by seeing it as a problem of and for all societies can this practice be eradicated.

---

This blog post was contributed by guest blogger Jason Tucker of Organic Development.  GJI welcomes guest blogs on topics salient to our work and mission.

AZ election officials stymie LEP voters

Phoenix (AZ) officials are under fire, MailOnline reports, after telling Spanish-speaking LEP voters – and only Spanish-speaking LEP voters – the wrong date for the upcoming Presidential Election:

Identification cards given to [LEP] voters were accompanied by a piece of paper listing the dates of upcoming major elections. The presidential election date appears correctly in [the English version] as ‘November 6, 2012′, but the Spanish equivalent reads ’8 de Noviembre 2012′ – two days late. The embarrassing blunder has led to suggestions that Hispanics in particular could be misled and discouraged from voting … Moreover, the dispute in Maricopa County could  fuel claims that certain groups are being disenfranchised across the  country.

Maricopa County officials are calling the incident ”an honest mistake” that will affect only a relatively small number of voters.  But a recipient of the erroneous voter ID documents, Charlotte Walker of Sun City, told ABC15 News that she fears the mistake “could have a significant impact on the election outcome because they’d go to the polls on November 8th and they wouldn’t be open. They wouldn’t be able to cast their vote this year.”  A spokesman for Promise Arizona, a group that works to boost civic participation among marginalized communities, warns that ”To know that there’s information out there that’s wrong, it’s going to take a lot of work to make sure that people know the  correct date.”

Voto Latino is using social media platforms to correct the County’s misinformation and get out the LEP vote.

FOR SHAME, Maricopa County, qué vergúenza.

---

READ MORE: Election officials under fire after telling Spanish speakers the wrong date  to go to the polls, By Hugo Gye, MailOnline (18  October 2012).

Social mores re sex, marriage exacerbate girls’ vulnerability

IPPF senior adviser on adolescents and young people Doortje Braeken says advocates working to eradicate early marriage have failed to address a critical issue: setting a minimum legal age for consent to sex.  “Setting a globally agreed legal age of marriage,” asserts Braeken, ”only deals with half the issue”:

[S]omething obvious is missing in all our sincere and potentially effective efforts towards ending child marriage … we have an unaddressed issue which is that of the age of consent: the age when you are legally allowed to have sex. As countries begin to amend the marriageable age, many amend the age of consent so the two align, if that is not already the case. Sex is regarded as something that can only start to happen when a marriage certificate is in place. This has two consequences: those who have sex before marriage are stigmatised, criminalised and rejected. And since sex before marriage is not supposed to happen, those who have sex before marriage often have no access to sexual health services because of laws, the attitudes of service providers, or because they are too afraid to go there. The question of age of consent has to be built into any recommendations aimed at banishing the abuses of early marriage … it should be right at the heart of any programme or policy which has anything to do with changing attitudes and actions which are damaging to young people’s sexual wellbeing, not to mention their economic, educational and social welfare. Which is what early or forced marriage is.

Addressing sex only in the context of marriage, argues Braeken, can have troubling consequences for women and girls; for example, whereas a married girl of 16 can access reproductive health advice and services, an unmarried 18-year-old woman is barred from doing so.  But, failing to align laws governing the minimum age for consent to sex and marriage can have troubling consequences, too, according to GJI forced marriage initiative director, Julia Alanen:

Inconsistent [U.S.] state laws governing consent to adolescent sex and marriage can yield absurd and indefensible results, leaving girls vulnerable to exploitation.  The vast majority of U.S. states permit a minor to marry, with parental consent, upon reaching age sixteen, and much younger in certain states, particularly in the event that a girl becomes pregnant.  A few states permit minors as young as age twelve or thirteen to marry with the permission of a parent or guardian … The minimum legal ages for consent to sex and marriage do not necessarily align within a given state.  For example, while a state’s sex-offense law may deem that a fifteen-year-old girl lacks, per se, the requisite maturity to lawfully consent to engage in sexual acts with a seventeen-year-old boy without triggering statutory rape charges (regardless of whether her parents consent), that very same state’s marriage law may simultaneously deem her sufficiently mature to lawfully consent to marry a fifty-year-old man (with her parents’ consent) and then proceed to [lawfully] consummate the marriage … While courts have cited preventing forced marriage as a valid basis for criminalizing certain adolescent sexual activity, they have yet to address preventing adolescent sexual activity as a valid basis for proscribing [early] marriage … Adolescent sex that is defined for compelling public policy reasons as nonconsensual per se, based on minors’ intrinsic lack of capacity to give free and informed consent, cannot reasonably be rendered consensual solely by virtue of a marriage ceremony.

In the west, just as in countries where child marriage is still a mainstream practice, deeply held traditional social mores concerning premarital versus marital sex can pose very real access barriers for unwed adolescent girls in need of critical reproductive health information and services.  Braeken underscores the importance of educating young people worldwide about sexuality and fundamental human rights:

[W]e must account for comprehensive sexuality education. Without education young people aren’t aware of their rights, and if they aren’t aware of their rights, they aren’t aware of how established custom, tradition and law may infringe those rights. Without education, they are unaware of the proper respect due to them as individuals.

Another oft-neglected aspect of the advocacy movement to eradicate early marriage is the importance of raising awareness among men and boys about the harmful consequences of child marriage and early pregnancy.  ”[I]f we want to promote an agenda of respect and rights which will bring an end to child marriage,” warns Braeken, ”possibly the people we need to focus on just as much as young girls … are young boys.”

---

READ MORE: Day of the Girl: why we must debate the age of consent, By Doortje Braeken, The Guardian (October 11, 2012).  J. Alanen, Shattering the Silence Surrounding Forced and Early Marriage in the United States, Children’s Legal Rights Journal, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Summer 2012).

Azerbaijan cracks down on child marriage

Azerbaijan

On the inaugural International Day of the Girl Child, Azerbaijan’s government has announced its intention to crack down on parents and others who promote child marriage.  18 is the minimum legal age for marriage under Azerbaijani family law.  ABC.AZ shared this official statement from Azerbaijan’s State Committee for Family, Women and Children Affairs:

We propose to toughen measures against individuals that contributed to early marriage and apply fines and other administrative measures in respect to them. In addition, according to Article 176 of the Family Code, parents are responsible for the fate of the child, and depending on the seriousness of the offense in respect of a child the crime may be punished by a fine or even imprisonment. However, this problem is a problem of the society, as local municipalities, the relevant structures of the executive authorities and NGOs should interfere in such cases of violation of children’s rights, as the girls aged 15-16 years, according to the legislation of Azerbaijan, are under-ages until they reach age of 18 years.

According to ABC.AZ, the crackdown follows an uptick in the number of forced early marriages in the country, leading in some cases to the suicides of young brides.

---

READ MORE: Azerbaijan prepares proposals to toughen measures against early marriage supporters, ABC.AZ (October 11, 2012).

Wedding busters call for child-marriage-free zones

Ending Child Marriage is the official theme of today’s first-ever International Day of the Girl Child, a day designated by United Nations Resolution 66/170 to recognize girls’ rights and the unique challenges girls face around the world.  So, today we celebrate courageous girls and advocates everywhere who are challenging harmful marriage practices and promoting social change, often at significant personal risk.

In honor of this auspicious occasion, we’re inspired to share the story of a brave group of girls who are tackling child marriage in a country where, according to UNICEF data, 74% of girls are married before the legal age of 18.  The Guardian reports that a group of Bangladeshi youth activists dubbed the ”wedding busters” is campaigning against child marriage and intervening on behalf of would-be child brides:

The children are well versed in handling such scenarios; they don’t argue, but methodically list the evils of child marriage. “We can’t force them to listen to us,” said Antara Tabassum, 16, one of the leaders of the child protection group in Nilphamari’s Jaldhaka Upazila sub-district. “All we can do is show them that child marriage is a curse.” The intervention of such groups is a key reason why all 11 of Jaldhaka’s unions or local councils have been able to declare their respective localities “child marriage-free zones” – no mean feat in a country where almost one in three children is married off before turning 15.

The UN has emphatically condemned child marriage as a fundamental human rights violation that negatively impacts all aspects of a girl’s life:

Child marriage denies a girl of her childhood, disrupts her education, limits her opportunities, increases her risk to be a victim of violence and abuse, jeopardizes her health and therefore constitutes an obstacle to the achievement of nearly every Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and the development of healthy communities. Child marriage results in early and unwanted pregnancies, posing life-threatening risks for girls. In developing countries, 90 per cent of births to adolescents aged 15-19 are to married girls, and pregnancy-related complications are the leading cause of death for girls in this age group. Preventing child marriage will protect girls’ rights and help reduce their risks of violence, early pregnancy, HIV infection, and maternal death and disability, including obstetric fistula. When girls are able to stay in school and avoid being married early, they can build a foundation for a better life for themselves and their families and participate in the progress of their nations.

That’s why the UN is calling upon all governments in partnership with civil society actors and the international community to take urgent action to end the harmful practice of child marriage by:

• Enacting and enforcing appropriate legislation to increase the minimum age of marriage for girls to 18 and raising public awareness about child marriage as a violation of girls’ human rights;
• Improving access to good quality primary and secondary education, ensuring that gender gaps in schooling are eliminated;
• Mobilizing girls, boys, parents, leaders, and champions to change harmful social norms, promote girls’ rights and create opportunities for them;
• Supporting girls who are already married by providing them with options for schooling, sexual and reproductive health services, livelihoods skills, opportunity, and recourse from violence in the home; and
• Addressing the root causes underlying child marriage, including gender discrimination, low value of girls, poverty, or religious and cultural justifications.

Check out these activities and events organized by UNFPA, UNICEF, and UN Women to mark the first International Day of the Girl.

---

To learn more about child marriage in the USA, check out this just-published piece by the Director of GJI’s Forced Marriage Initiative, titled Shattering the Silence Surrounding Forced and Early Marriage in the United States.

Social unrest spurs forced marriage

Syrians seek refuge in neighboring Jordan

In the wake of the Syrian uprising that began in Spring 2011, an estimated 150,000 people have fled Syria for Jordan.  Syrian women and girls living in refugee camps and temporary housing are especially vulnerable to harmful marriage practices and other forms of gender-based violence and exploitation.  In an article posted this morning by RH Reality Check, freelance journalist Ruth Michaelson reports:

Visitors to Amman speak of a recent phenomenon: get into any taxi, chat with the driver, and he will tell you that “cheap wives” are to be found in the refugee camps near the Syrian border. “Cheap” refers to the dowry given to the brides’ families, as well as to the women’s expectations.

Real or imagined, local notions about Syrian women could exacerbate their vulnerability to harmful marriage practices.  “There are all kinds of social conceptions of Syrian women as the most obedient, the most caring of their husbands out of all Middle Eastern women,” activist Khadija told Michaelson, “There are all kinds of jokes now within Jordanian society that the women should watch out, as with all these Syrian women in the country, the men will always choose a Syrian woman over a Jordanian woman.”  Michaelson warns:

[C]ultural norms dictate that most Syrian women will have lower expectations for their standard of living, having come from an even poorer country … Add to this that Syrian women are normally paler, a valuable asset in a region in which skin-bleaching products replace tanning products. There is a growing sense that female Syrian refugees, while socially elevated, are now increasingly perceived as vulnerable, due to the conditions under which many refugees are living.

GJI forced marriage initiative director Julia Alanen says that “Social unrest, war, civil conflict, natural disasters, famine and poverty in many parts of the world precipitate forced and early marriage.  Displaced families who have lost everything sometimes sell their daughters into marriage in an effort to feed and shelter both the bride and the rest of the family.”  Plan UK confirms that exigent circumstances in recent years have increased the rates of forced and early marriage:

Food insecurity in Kenya has led to the phenomena of ‘famine brides’, drought and conflict in Afghanistan have forced farmers to arrange and receive money for the early marriage of their daughters, and girls in Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka have been pressed into marriages with ‘tsunami widowers’, in many instances doing so to receive state subsidies for marrying and starting a family.  Early marriage increased in Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami as families in refugee camps saw it as the only protection for their daughters from rape and in Sri Lanka, where rates of early marriage are normally relatively low, girls have been married to protect them from recruitment into militia.

“All too often,” observes Alanen, “the very women and girls whose plights fuel contemporary struggles for human rights and social justice pay the highest price for reform.”

READ MORE: The Road to Hell Is Paved with Good Intentions: Syrian Refugees and “Marriages of Convenience”, by Ruth Michaelson, Freelance Journalist (Middle East), RH Reality Check (October 9, 2012).

This October 11th marks an historic day for girls worldwide

Tags

international day of the girl

Can you imagine being forced to marry somebody three of four times your own age when you’re as young as 5 years old?  This fate awaits a staggering number of girls worldwide.  In the developing world, one in every seven girls will be married before she turns 15.  Early marriage destroys girls’ youth, ends their education and undermines their independence.  Plan UK has released a short series of inspiring films worth a watch:

You can support these vulnerable young girls by signing Plan UK’s petition calling for vital government action to end forced and early marriage.  Then, join me, Plan UK and GJI this Thursday, October 11, 2012 in celebrating the first-ever UN-designated International Day of the Girl!

---

This blog post was contributed by guest blogger Jason Tucker of Organic Development.  GJI welcomes guest blogs on topics salient to our work and mission.

India’s version of Dora the Explorer combats early marriage

Meet Meena, the star of India’s popular animated series.  Meena is helping UNICEF promote children’s rights by educating kids about harmful practices such as early marriage.  Check out this episode of the cartoon, titled “Say no to dowry”:

READ MORE: Video: Meena, India’s Dora the Explorer, Helps UNICEF Promote ‘Child Rights’, Asia Society (October 5, 2012).

Denmark’s forced marriage law under fire

Denmark is one of a growing number of countries that have passed laws criminalizing forced marriage.  But, in spite of a 2008 amendment designed to strengthen Denmark’s forced marriage legislation by increasing the punishment from two to four years of prison, nobody has ever been convicted under the Danish law.  According to PhD student Sabba Mirza, quoted in The Copenhagen Post:

All the organisations that are working in the field say that there is an increase in the number of [forced] marriages. So when there are no cases for the courts then it could indicate that the rules aren’t good enough.

Advocates have identified two key problems thwarting authorities’ efforts to intervene in forced marriage cases, shortcomings that could explain why the law isn’t having its intended effect.  First, Denmark’s forced marriage law applies only to marriages that are formally recognized by the Danish government, whereas many forced marriages are conducted privately and never officially registered.

A second major flaw in the Danish law is that it focuses on preventing non-consensual marriages induced by physical force, whereas most forced marriages are the result of acute psychological coercion.  “[T]he law should be widened so that it also includes psychological pressure,” says Mirza, “which in many cases can be far more oppressive than real violence.”  Peter Skaarup of the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti) agrees: “I think the situation would definitely change if we broadened the criteria for how we define ‘force’,” Skaarup told Politiken, “It may help create a mentality change in the parallel societies where this happens and we know through studies that social control is often forced through social and psychological pressure and not just violence.”

Frontline responders in other countries that, like Denmark, have criminalized forced marriage complain that criminal consequences have actually deterred victims from reporting their parents and loved ones to police.  A spokesperson for Hemat Gryffe Women’s Aid, a Glasgow safe house for forced marriage victims, told The Scotsman:

We supported 14 women last year, most of whom are quite young, aged 16 to 21.  They suddenly find papers saying they’re going to another country, or the wedding starts getting discussed among the family.  However, you cannot criminalise the family because then the women will not come forward.  They won’t want their parents or aunts or uncles put in jail. The purpose of the bill must be to impose civil order, to prevent the marriage going ahead.

And, a recent study by Dr Aisha Gill at Roehampton University concluded, “For many victims it is crucial that seeking help does not prevent future reconciliation with their families, especially their parents.  In this regard, criminalisation may actively discourage many victims and potential victims from speaking out about the abuse/coercion they are facing.”  Lord Lester, who introduced the UK’s civil Forced Marriage bill into Parliament, has consistently advocated for a strictly civil approach.  The BBC Ethics Guide quotes him as saying that the criminal process “has not proved to be an effective way of tackling a major social problem.”  However, Prime Minister David Cameron and some Members of Parliament continue to push for criminalization, arguing that criminalization would take the burden off of the victim and place it on the state.

Even victims are divided on the civil-versus-criminal debate.  Forced-marriage survivor Jasvinder Sanghera, who supports criminalization, told The Observer that victims will only report violations if they are made to understand that they bear no blame.  “Victims are saying we need the full protection of the law,” says Sanghera, ”We’re trying to create a cultural responsibility here. It’s our duty to bring this above ground … This is an offence that is not to be tolerated, an offence that can – and does – end in violence, rape and murder.”  Conversely, forced-marriage survivor, Sameem Ali, adamantly opposes criminalization, saying “No young person wants to turn their parents in and get them into trouble.”

GJI forced marriage initiative director Julia Alanen cautions that “Criminalizing forced marriage could inspire contempt and distrust among the very victims, families, and communities whose cooperation is most critical to ending this harmful practice.  The United States and other countries that are only just beginning to develop a legislative response to forced marriage will do well to consider lessons learned in Denmark and other sovereign states with well-established forced-marriage protection regimes.”

---

READ MORE: PM criticized for views on tackling forced marriage, The Copenhagen Post (October 4, 2012); Forced marriages continue despite tightened legislation, (August 2, 2012).

Shattering the silence surrounding forced marriage in the USA

Curious to learn more about modern-day forced/early marriage customs in the USA?  Check out the just-published article authored by GJI Forced Marriage Initiative director, Julia Alanen, titled Shattering the Silence Surrounding Forced and Early Marriage in the United States.  According to Alanen:

It is a well-established human rights principle that every individual has a fundamental right to choose whether, when, and whom to marry.  Forced marriage is an intrinsic human rights violation, regardless of whether the victim consequently suffers any physical or psychological harm … An effective U.S. strategy to eradicate harmful marriage practices will include culturally competent, victim-centered legislation; mandatory training and practice guidelines for the full range of responders; holistic legal and social services; and a robust community-led development component.  Together, the mounting voices of fierce advocates and courageous survivors are shattering the insidious silence surrounding forced and early marriage in the United States.

READ ON to find out how and why thousands of American women and girls from Los Angeles to The Big Apple are forced or coerced into unwanted marriages that often lead to domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, reproductive health problems, ‘honor crimes,’ and even suicide.  Learn how a dearth of U.S. laws and resources coupled with a profound lack of awareness about this emerging issue leave victims vulnerable.  And, discover what U.S. advocates and NGOs are doing to protect forced-marriage victims, empower survivors, and eradicate this harmful practice.

---

Special thanks to former GJI legal intern Hannah Cartwright for her outstanding legal research support, and to Dr. Patricia Maloof for her invaluable insight into the social and cultural aspects of forced and early marriage.

Rising food prices lead to forced marriages in poorer countries

Tags

early marriage, forced marriage

Photo courtesy of Plan UK

Those of us fortunate enough to be living our lives in the relative comfort and prosperity of the West may be forgiven for having a bit of a moan when petrol prices go up or a loaf of bread suddenly costs 5p more.  However, imagine what it must be like in those parts of the world where incomes are so low that transport and bread take up just about all your income.  Poor farmers in those countries have already been financially pole-axed by the steep rise in the cost of fuel in recent years as they rely so heavily on it for irrigation and moving equipment and produce around.  On top of this people in these poorer areas now face the spectre of sharply increasing food prices following this year’s drought in America’s breadbasket states and in the Ukraine.  Surging corn prices are already starting to impact on the cost of staple foods all around the world.

War-torn Yemen is just one country where the population is starting to really suffer the effects of all this.  Already the poorest country in the Middle – East, around half of its 20 million souls are now firmly in the grip of starvation.  They can neither find work nor afford food.  People haven’t had a proper meal in weeks and are trying to survive on scraps.  What is particularly heart-breaking is that parents are pulling children out of school to beg and are selling what few possessions they have just to get food for today.  Perhaps most distressing of all is the growing incidence of desperate mothers and fathers finding that they have no option other than to marry their young daughters off so that the dowries can feed their families for a few more weeks.

Thanks to our own good fortune, we in the West simply cannot comprehend the desperation of people having to resort to “selling “ their daughters in order to buy bread.  Most of the girls involved are no more than teenagers and, in the majority of cases, they are being sentenced to a lifetime of unhappiness.  However, amazingly, it is surprising how many of these child brides readily accept their fate knowing that it is either that or watching their parents and siblings waste away from starvation.

It is sad at a time when so much effort is going into ending the scourge of forced marriages that even Mother Nature cannot be relied upon to play her part.

---

This blog post was contributed by guest blogger Jason Tucker of Organic Development.  GJI welcomes guest blogs on topics salient to our work and mission.

Secret child marriages persist…in plain sight

A UK investigation has revealed that some British Muslim clerics are willing to perform marriage ceremonies for brides as young as 12 years old, so long as the girls’ parents promise not to tell.  According to the Daily Mail, Imam Mohammed Kassamali of the Husaini Islamic Centre in Peterborough is alleged to have reassured a man who approached him posing as the father of a pre-teen bride:

I would love the girl to go to her husband’s houses (sic) as soon as  possible, the younger the better. Under sharia (Islamic law) there is  no problem. It is said she should see her first sign of puberty at the house of her husband. The problem is that we cannot explain such things (the marriage) if the girl went tomorrow (to the authorities). The other thing is the underage thing and if tomorrow the girl is,  let’s say coerced or forced into this, and she goes and reports it to the police then she will put all of us into the problems.

Retired Imam Abdul Haque – who agreed to officiate the girl’s marriage ceremony – allegedly had this to add:

Tell people it is an engagement but it will be a marriage. In Islam, once the girl reaches  puberty the father has the right, the parents have the right, but under the laws of this country if the girl complains and says her marriage has been arranged and she wasn’t of marriageable age, then the person who  performed the marriage will be jailed as well as the mother and father.

The Peterborough Telegraph reports that Imam Kassamali has stepped down pending the results of an internal investigation initiated by the mosque.  Although an increasing number of Muslims and progressive clerics emphatically condemn child marriage, the harmful cultural practice persists in some communities.

READ MORE: The British child brides: Muslim mosque leaders agree to marry girl of 12… so long as parents don’t tell anyone, Daily Mail (September 9, 2012).

Armenia: protecting girls by delaying marriage

Armenia may be the next sovereign state to join the growing ranks of countries that are amending their family laws to raise the minimum legal age of marriage to 18.  The proposed amendment, approved in July and set for debate in Armenia’s National Assembly this Fall, would bring Armenia into line with international human rights standards on child protection.

But, not everybody in the Yezidi village of Rya Taza has embraced the proposed marriage law reform.  Rya Taza village head Ahmad Broyan told ArmeniaNow that there isn’t a single 20-year old girl left in the village, saying “There is a queue for girls, we want to wait until they grow up, but there aren’t any, not even spinsters.”  Villager Sona Aslo, a 33-year old mother of four who has just arranged her 14-year-old daughter Ilona’s marriage, agrees with Broyan:

My mother-in-law and I have decided to abide by our tradition, [Ilona] is too young but we gave her [to marriage] anyway.  I got married when I was 15, too, so what? We saw it’s a good family, and what could my daughter have said?

Ilona’s uncle Kyaram Davreshyan, 56, objects to his niece’s imminent nuptials, “What were they thinking when they agreed to this marriage? She is too young and will have a hard time. They should have waited at least for a couple of more years to let her mature a little bit.”  And the child bride’s 12-year-old sister Ela vows, “I won’t let them wed me so early. I am dreaming of becoming a dancer, I keep telling them that I won’t get married.”  ArmeniaNow reporter Gayane Mkrtchyan sees promise in Ela’s declaration, “signs of rebellion that might, one day, spark revolution in this society wed to archaic customs.”

READ MORE: Married to Tradition: Armenia’s Yezidi at odds over government amendment on matrimony, By Gayane Mkrtchyan, Armenia Now (September 7, 2012).

Coming soon, U.S. forced marriage hotline

The New York-based AHA Foundation is gearing up to launch the first-ever U.S. national Forced Marriage Hotline this Fall.  AHA communications director Amanda Parker told CBS:

Honor violence and forced marriage are often linked. There are a lot of different methods to force women into marriage, from violence, to emotional blackmail, to social isolation… We’ve known anecdotally that this is happening for a while, but it’s a problem that is largely unknown even among social service providers… The main thing is for [responders] to know, if a young girl comes to them and says, ‘My dad says he’s going to kill me because of how I dress,’ that they should take her seriously.

AHA Foundation’s national call center, modeled after the United Kingdom’s national forced marriage hotline, will be staffed by crisis specialists trained to connect callers
with a broad range of services, from law enforcement and legal assistance to emergency shelter and counseling.

READ MORE: Planned national hotline hopes to help American girls facing a forced marriage, By Julia Dahl, CBS (August 31, 2012).

Male-only divorce = forced marriage for many women

Forced marriage isn’t always about force, fraud, coercion, or incapacity in the inducement to marry.  Even when a marriage begins with a happy couple and mutually consensual nuptials, lack of access to divorce can force an unwilling wife to remain in a violent, abusive, or unhappy union.  That’s why GJI was pleased to learn that Palestinian religious authorities have announced sweeping divorce law reforms that will make it easier for a Muslim woman to end her marriage.  According to The Associated Press:

Under Palestinian law, women cannot unilaterally demand a divorce. That is still the privilege of men, who can divorce their wives without recourse to a court… Divorce for [Palestinian] Muslims is handled at Islamic family law courts where clerics serve as judges, since personal status issues are governed by Shariah law… For decades, Palestinian women seeking to divorce their husbands [have] risked years of miserable, expensive litigation or lengthy domestic battles as they begged their spouses for permission to leave.

If a wife is able to produce tangible evidence of mistreatment by her husband, she might succeed in securing a divorce, but many common forms of domestic violence, such as rape, sexual assault, threats and psychological abuse, can be virtually impossible to prove.  Attorney Fatima al-Muaqat, an expert on Palestinian divorce law, told AP that the divorce process for Muslim Palestinian women can take as long as 10 years in some cases.  AP predicts the Shariah law reforms will ease the disparate burden on women:

The changes mean women no longer have to prove ill treatment. The Islamic judges who decide divorce cases for Palestinian Muslims will have the power to decide, without evidence, that her marriage is harmful for them…and the divorce must be completed within three months… ”In Islamic law, the relation between spouses should be based on tenderness, love and understanding,” said Sheik Yousef al-Dais, head of the Islamic courts in the Palestinian Authority, as he announced the changes Thursday. “If there’s hatred between them, should we force them to stay together?”

According to AP, a recent tragedy heightened scrutiny of the misogynistic family laws and prompted legal reform:

[A] man killed his wife by slashing her throat in a marketplace in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. The wife had battled judges to grant her a divorce. Her husband is now in prison. The incident provoked widespread outrage in a culture where violence against women mostly takes place in private and is considered an internal, family issue. The changes make a huge step forward in a society where many still believe that a woman should have no right to separate from her husband.

READ MORE: Palestinians chip away at male divorce monopoly, By DIAA HADID, Associated Press (August 31, 2012).

Canada confronts forced/early marriage

According to Lawyers Weekly, “family honor appears to have been a motivating factor in at least 13 homicides in Canada over the past decade.”  One girl’s tragic case has increased awareness of harmful marriage practices in Canada amidst mounting debate about whether forced-marriage laws should be civil or criminal.  The Lawyers Weekly reports:

Shafilea Ahmed drank bleach after her parents drugged her and dragged her onto a plane to Pakistan where they planned to marry her to a much older man. The 17-year-old’s desperate ploy succeeded in getting her sent back home…where she spent eight weeks in hospital. Tragically, it didn’t save her life: Seven months later Shafilea was dead, suffocated by her parents, who forced a plastic bag down her throat in front of her siblings as a warning against them acquiring their sister’s “western” habits. This month, a court jailed the Pakistani-born couple for life for the apparent “honour” killing.

Like their English and Scottish counterparts, frontline women’s advocates in Canada fear that criminalizing forced marriage would only force the harmful practice underground, exacerbating the danger to victims.  South Asian Legal Clinic staff lawyer, Deepa Mattoo of Toronto, who has extensive experience with forced marriage victims, told Lawyers Weekly:

We feel there is a threat for the unjust targeting of communities. We know, dealing with the cases on the ground, that sometimes women know well what could be their fate and they still go ahead and do it, because they love their families, their own brothers, their father, and their sisters and they’re not going to come out to criminalize them. You will basically shut down a lot of women from seeking help because they know, once they try to go to the [police] and get their, say father, arrested, that relationship is going to go away.

Mattoo advocates that Canada rely on civil laws to protect victims, and dedicate resources to educate and consult affected communities.  “A lot of our communities don’t even understand — the area is so gray…what they are doing is actually a step further than arranged marriages,” Mattoo told LW, “So they are themselves not clear about when they are crossing the line.”

DOJ spokeswoman Carole Saindon told LW that Canada is committed to honoring international conventions condemning forced and early marriage, and “honor-based” violence.  Lawyers Weekly says Justice Minister Rob Nicholson’s press secretary, Julie Di Mambro, declined to comment on whether Ottawa will move to criminalize forced marriage.

READ MORE: Forced marriage: Is it a crime?, Cristin Schmitz, The Lawyers Weekly (August 31, 2012 issue).

Promoting democracy by advancing language access

Kudos to California’s State Assembly for taking an important step to respect, protect, and fulfill the language-access rights of 6 million voting-age, limited- and non-English speaking (LEP/NEP) Californians.  Asian Journal reports:

In a vote hailed as a historic step forward for millions of California voters whose ability to speak and read English is limited, the state Assembly today passed SB 1233, which would require the state to translate ballot initiative petitions being circulated for signature-gathering into widely-spoken languages. The bill, which passed by 47 to 23, now returns to the Senate for concurrence on amendments.

The bill, authored by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima) and sponsored by The Greenlining Institute, would apply rules similar to those in the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 (which prohibits discrimination in voting) to California ballot initiative petitions.  SB 1233 would require California to translate sample ballots and voter information pamphlets into the following 9 high-needs languages:

• Chinese
• Hindi
• Japanese
• Khmer
• Korean
• Spanish
• Tagalog
• Thai
• Vietnamese

“Democracy should be for everyone,” Greenlining Our Democracy program director Michelle Romero told Asian Journal, “California speaks 200 languages, but our initiative petitions speak only one.  We can bring millions of voters fully into our democratic process, and it will only cost about a penny per person.”

READ MORE: Assembly Passes Historic Language Access Bill, Asian Journal (August 21, 2012).