WUNRN

http://www.wunrn.com

 

Please see 2 parts of this WUNRN release on child marriage.

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http://www.usaid.gov/press/frontlines/fl_feb11/FL_feb11_WAdvocate.html

Also via SVRI - Sexual Violence Research Initiative

Combating Early Marriage from the Ground Up

Child brides are not only robbed of childhood, but also face a range of health risks. USAID targets attitudes, education, and empowerment. It all starts at the community level.

February/March 2011

Elisa Walton | WOMEN IN DEVELOPMENT

Ethiopian women in front of building

credit: Pathfinder-Ethiopia

Yeshi Alem, left, educates her village about the perils of making girls marry young. She is seen here with one of the women she has been counseling.

At age 12, Loko, whose last name is withheld for privacy reasons, was forced to marry a man 50 years her senior. As with many child marriages in her home country of Ethiopia, it was a family member who made the decision that derailed her childhood. The 10th of 11 children, she was sold off by her older brother after their father died. Marriage brought a destitute life—her husband was too old to work, and they often went hungry.

Two years later, she became pregnant. After a difficult delivery, she lost her child and ended up with a fistula, a painful childbirth-related injury that left her incontinent—and which could have been prevented with more accessible medical care such as a C-section.

After seven years, Loko's life took a sudden turn. With USAID assistance, she was sent to a distant hospital to undergo surgery to repair the fistula. Fourteen days later, she walked out of the hospital, healthy again.

It was, she said, "more than I had ever dreamt about [and] made me feel again as a human being equal to the others."

Determined not to let others suffer as she had, Loko became a community advocate against child marriage. "I promised that I will continue to work hard on these issues throughout my life, with full commitment to act as a model," she said.

In recognition that women like Loko are the most powerful advocates for women's rights in their communities, USAID is supporting other efforts to help women use their voices and stories to help others.

One such program, "Through Our Eyes," helps community members communicate their stories through video and raise issues that are often not discussed. The project has worked with communities in Liberia, Southern Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda, and Thailand to produce 40 short videos.

In one video, a man lures a young girl into his house under the premise of buying the fruit she is selling. This film and others are used to illustrate topics that are all too common around the world, including rape, child marriage, and domestic violence.

In Liberia, a video made in collaboration with the Fistula Rehabilitation Center on the link between early marriage and fistula was shown to 629 women and 462 men, successfully educating them about the risks involved and persuading many of the women to seek care at local health-care facilities.

The Child Bride Pandemic

Worldwide, there are approximately 51 million child brides—those married under the age of 18—and over the next 10 years, an estimated 100 million girls, or roughly a third of the population of the United States, will be married before the age of 18. Many factors, including poverty, poor education, and traditional practices, contribute to the enduring practice of child marriage. In addition, girls below the age of 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their 20s. They are also predisposed to sustain injuries, such as fistulas, which plague approximately 2 million women worldwide. These injuries could be prevented with timely access to emergency obstetric care.

The USAID-produced videos have been shown at 440 community "playbacks" around the world. After the video, trained facilitators guide public discussions with the audience. The goal is for the videos not only to build awareness, but also to transform women's roles in the process.

According to Liberian video trainer Albert Pyne, "usually in our setting, in the Liberian setting, Liberian women don't really speak in public, especially when the men are around. Whenever they gather, they don't speak openly. But if you take the video to the community and do a playback, the women see themselves sometimes in the picture and they don't care who is around. They will speak their mind . . . and you will see their emotion."

As a result, "it empowers our sisters, our mothers, to speak for themselves, to express their feeling about the level of violence against them, and the way out . . . . The video can mobilize the community for itself," Pyne said.

However, community involvement does not stop there.

Acknowledging that the deeper roots of the practice have to be addressed, USAID has helped fund an additional program in Ethiopia that engages religious leaders, teachers, and the public in forums to discuss the harmful effects of early marriage.

Opening up the Floor

At advocacy sessions in the Tigrai and Amhara regions in 2005, representatives from the country's main religious bodies—Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Catholics, and Evangelists—agreed to resolutions condemning early marriage and vowing to teach their followers about the dangers of such practices. At an advocacy session, one Muslim leader explained the importance of these measures: "When girls are married at a young age, they get hurt because their bodies have not matured yet. We, as religious leaders, should be serious about this."

These efforts have begun to pay off. According to USAID partner Pathfinder, the national rate of child marriage in Ethiopia fell from 33.1 percent to 21.4 percent between 1998 and 2008. In the Amhara region, where the practice was particularly entrenched, the rate fell from 61.8 percent to 44.8 percent over the 10 years of the USAID-Pathfinder intervention.Yeshi Alem, from the Amhara region, is another example of the new attitude that is beginning to spread in Ethiopia. With five children of her own, including four girls, she has helped prevent more than 300 early marriages in her community, working through its early marriage committee.

"I teach from experience. I know the hardships of raising many children," Alem said. "My husband now sees the benefits of what I started eight years ago even though he wasn't convinced of it then."

 

http://www.usaid.gov/press/frontlines/fl_feb11/FL_feb11_WYemen.html

Yemeni Communities Unite Against Child Marriage

February/March 2011

Derek Lee | WOMEN IN DEVELOPMENT

two women in burkas

credit: Basic Health Services Project

Two community educators prepare for a training session on the safe age of marriage. Twenty men and 20 women were selected from a group of religious leaders, nurse midwives, and civic leaders.

"I want to be an English teacher!"

"A journalist!"

"I will be a doctor!"

A dozen Yemeni girls sit on the floor of a diwan in Al Sawd village, giggling and smiling bashfully as they describe what they hope to be doing in 10 years. They are between 8 and 15 years old, and are fortunate to attend one of the few local schools for girls.

In this remote corner of northwest Yemen, most of their female peers have already ended their schooling. While this group can still afford to dream, the grim reality is that most girls their age will soon be married, without a chance to complete their education or have a career.

Yemen is one of 20 "hot spot" countries for child marriage, a conservative Muslim nation where a seventh of all girls are married by age 14 and nearly half by age 17. In rural districts, girls as young as 9 are often betrothed. Most "hot spot" countries are clustered in central Africa, with other pockets in Southeast Asia and Central America.

Various factors have institutionalized child marriage. For some, it is a tribal custom. For others, exchanging daughters without dowries in "trade marriages" makes economic sense.

Regardless of its causes, child marriage represents a human rights infringement and a public health problem. It deprives young girls of a childhood, enhances their risk of domestic abuse, and entraps them in a cycle of poverty.

The health consequences are also dire. According to the World Health Organization, the maternal mortality rate is five times higher for adolescent girls under age 15 than those over 20, and the health outcomes for their infants are similarly poor.

USAID has confronted this issue with its Safe Age of Marriage (SAM) program, designed to change social norms around early marriage, girls' education, and children's rights. In partnership with the Yemeni Women's Union, the pilot program was implemented in two districts in the Amran governorate starting in 2009.

Leaders of the Community

A land of treacherous roads and dust-colored houses built into the mountain steppes, the Al Sawd and Al Soodah districts in Amran represent some of the most isolated regions in Yemen. Most of the population is illiterate and 71 percent of mothers are married before age 18. In these rural communities, USAID support trained 40 community leaders on the social and health benefits of delaying marriage. It also taught them how to share this knowledge with others.

"The community educators themselves decided the best way to talk about early marriage," explains Leah Freij, a senior gender adviser with the USAID-funded Extending Service Delivery Project. "They went to schools. They distributed newsletters. They talked to women in their homes."

They also garnered support from the Ministries of Education and Public Health and Population, which spoke at monthly fairs on the safe age of marriage. As the program gained traction, even the governor of Amran got involved—he personally awarded 12 "model families" in a ceremony for not only delaying their daughters' marriages, but also for educating them through 12th grade.

Piloting Results

The initial results of this pilot are promising. In one year, community educators reached 29,000 people, leading to an 18 percent jump in awareness in the benefits of delaying marriage. The program was instrumental in preventing 53 girl-child marriages.

It shifted the peak age of girls' marriage from 14 to 18 years old in the project area. Several villagers asked community educators to help them annul their daughters' marriages, and in one instance a community educator ended an engagement by paying back the family's dowry himself. In addition, the Ministry of Endowment and Guidance in Amran directed all religious leaders in the governorate to speak about the consequences of child marriage in their Friday sermons. Not long afterwards, the entire Al Soodah community took an oath to forbid child marriage for girls under 18.

"This is a big accomplishment," says Freij. "This is changing social norms."

According to Dalia Al Eryani, the lead program coordinator, the program's greatest benefit is getting information to an area usually deprived of it. "One woman thought her daughter was cursed because she kept having miscarriages," she recounts. "She went from healer to healer. When the daughter turned 18, she finally gave birth to a healthy boy. When we came and talked about early marriage, the woman said, 'Oh, this explains what happened to my daughter.' It's a real eye-opener."

USAID's support is part of a broader effort to ensure that community leaders—including religious leaders and midwives—are informed and help community members make sound decisions for themselves and their children, notes Sean Jones, USAID/ Yemen's technical program director.

Community educators and traditional leaders continue to be both sources of information and role models. Freij points to the community educator who led the schoolgirl discussion. She was married and still completed college with her husband's support.

"The girls used to think you had to choose between an education and marriage," says Freij. "Now they see they can have both."