WUNRN
140 Million
Girls Will Become Child Brides by 2020 at Current Rates
The UN Commission on Status of Women, Session 57,
debated inclusion of child marriage in agreement on eliminating violence
against women, as
A young
mother carrying her baby gets water at a well at St Luke s
More than 140 million girls will
become child brides by 2020 if current rates of early marriage continue,
according to the UN.
Of that number of girls aged under
18, 50 million will be younger than 15, says the UN Population Fund, which
co-hosted a panel on child marriage at the Commission on the Status of Women
(CSW) on Thursday.
Although rates of child marriage vary between and within countries, most
take place in rural sub-Saharan Africa
and south
In south
Nine of the 10 countries with the highest rates of child marriage
are in
Michelle Bachelet, the head of UN
Women, has called child marriage a violation of girls' human rights, as it
halts education, increases health risks through early pregnancy and motherhood,
and increases the chances of girls being the victims of sexual violence in the
home.
The inclusion of child marriage
in the CSW outcome agreement on eliminating violence against women and girls is
now being debated.
On Thursday, the World Young Women's Christian Association presented a petition to CSW urging the conference to
commit to ending child marriage by 2030, and make the issue an indicator in any
future development goals.
However, there are significant
barriers to achieving this in many countries, particularly poor countries,
which have fewer resources to keep girls in school and which see early marriage
as a traditional, accepted practice.
To address the issue in
The issue is viewed as a major health challenge and is a key part of the
country's wider efforts to cut maternal mortality rates.
"Our biggest worry is that
where women are getting married early, it is causing a lot of maternal
deaths," she told the Guardian. "We have one of the highest rates in
the world. President [Joyce] Banda says this is something we don't want to see.
Birth should not be a death sentence to women … we need to end early marriage.
It has a serious effect on social and health aspects."
According to the UN, complications
from pregnancy and childbirth are the leading causes of death for girls between
the ages of 15 and 19 in poorer countries. Stillbirths and deaths of newborn
babies are 50% higher among mothers under the age of 20 than among women who
get pregnant in their 20s.
Efforts to address child marriage have been on the cards in
Part of that initiative is to involve local tribal chiefs, working with
them to encourage their communities to send their children
to school, especially girls, and to dispel the idea that marrying off girls
early will bring blessings to the family.
The issue of funding a child's
studies past primary school, though, remains a challenge. Hara said the
president herself funds girls through school and is encouraging her ministers
to do the same. Hara said the country does not have the money to fund free
secondary schooling.
"She [Banda] is encouraging
women ministers to identify girls to support, girls in our constituency in
challenging situations," she said. "At the moment, there are no
resources to make secondary education free, as there are so many challenges."
Hara said giving girls four more
years in school would have a positive impact on the rates of child marriage.
Poverty, though is a major driver
of child marriage. Poor families marry off their daughters young, as it will
mean one less mouth to feed, and the prospect of receiving a "bride
price" – money or livestock in exchange for a daughter's hand in marriage
– is particularly tempting in difficult times.
"It all boils down to
poverty … young girls are being married off before puberty. Someone will come
in and give a father a cow for a girl when they are eight or nine years old and
when they reach puberty they will give another cow," Hara said.
Hara said the government is running
country-wide consultations to garner support and understanding for raising the
age of marriage. "The government is looking into doing consultation at
local and national level to get everyone on board. Working with chiefs will
make implementation and policing much easier. We need to ensure that people
don't take this as a primitive measure, but take it as positive."