WUNRN
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Tajik
Girls Drop School to Marry |
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The collapse of the
Soviet Union and the civil war in Tajikistan have made girl children
particularly vulnerable. Girls are brought up to be good Muslims and
obedient wives, but many are unable to fend for themselves if family links
break down. During the civil war, parents married off
their young daughters in order to protect them from kidnapping and rape by
soldiers on both sides. But after the war, many impoverished parents in the
countryside could not afford to send their daughters to school. "My parents told me - don't go to
school, stay at home," says Sarvinoz, who at the age of 19 cannot read
or write. When she was 16 she was married off. But
three years later she had to leave her husband's home as she did not get on
with her mother in law, and they told her to leave.
Now Sarvinoz is wondering
what to do. Although she would like to get an education and work as a
teacher, at the moment she cannot even sign her name. Teaching sewing The village where Sarvinoz lives is
situated in Garm, in Eastern Tajikistan, an area known for its patriarchal
traditions. During the Soviet Union a modern school was built here, with
money coming directly from Moscow. When it was finished in 1989, it had the
facilities of any modern secondary - language and science labs, and good
sports facilities. But Negina, a fifth-form teacher, says that
every year there are fewer and fewer girls coming, and that as a result, the
school has had to adapt its curriculum in an effort to attract girls. "We visit parents, and we ask them:
would they allow their daughters to go to school if we bring sewing machines
and teach them sewing?" she said. "They say, 'yes, why not? If girls are
going to learn something, they can go to school.' "Yes, we teach academic subjects, but
parents say - 'what's the point of this?' They don't want their girls to
study."
Another teacher, Mairam
Uruzbekova, is reading out a list of local girls who have dropped out of the
school This is the first year when the school is
required to keep such a list. But even if the government has only just
started thinking about it, non-governmental organisations have been raising
the issue for years. "Girls do not go to school, they work
in the fields and they look after younger siblings," says Gulchikhra
Mirzoeva, an expert in gender relations from Dushanbe. "They have too much work from a very
young age." She recently visited a rural area and spoke
to 12 girls aged between 10 and 12, none of whom attended school. Instead,
they were all working in the fields. 'Future mothers' Ms Mirzoeva says she found that amongst
them there was a total lack of interest in getting an education. "They said, 'we learn to read the
Koran and we pray five times a day'. I said - the Koran is very good, but
what about other books, what about reading and writing? They did not
understand," she explains. "They were more
interested in talking about marriage, the kind of husband they are going to
get, is he going to be young and good looking, is he going to have more wives
or not. "In the Soviet Union such cases were
rare. It was illegal not to send a girl to school." However, the Tajik education minister,
Abdujabor Rahmonov, says he believes that the case Ms Mirzoeva observed is
rare. "Girls are future mothers, they should
be well educated," he argues. "Only one or two per cent of girls do
not attend school." If that is the case, then we were very
lucky to meet several such girls as soon as we arrived in a village in Garm -
some of whom were illiterate. But the minister insisted that new literacy
centres are being created for these girls to teach them to read and write. And he also contended it is "very
rare" for underage girls to get married and work in their husband's
home. "It happened during the civil war, but
not now," he said. "These are criminal cases, and the prosecutor's office is investigating them. We make sure it does not happen." |
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