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