This story, reported in The Daily Star, is rather moving:
The marriage of a 13-year-old girl was prevented after her schoolmates marched in protest and lodged a police complaint in Satkhira town in southwestern Bangladesh.
Around 50 girls, students of Class 8 of the Abdul Karim Girls’ School, surprised the townspeople by taking to the streets and filing a complaint with the police, the Daily Star reported Friday.
Habiba Sultana, 13, dared not oppose her marriage to a neighbour 10 years her senior, who her father Siddique Sana, hard-pressed for money, had chosen.
But when she confided in some of her friends, one of them told her own father to lodge a complaint but he did not oblige.
Left with no choice, the girls prepared a petition and submitted it to the officer in charge of the Sadar Police Station.
Satkhira police chief Mirza Abdullahel Baki hurriedly summoned Sana and asked him to stop his minor daughter’s marriage.
Habiba’s father then had to sign a bond that he would not marry off his daughter until she became an adult.
Such marriages are not state sanctioned - under Bangladeshi law, legal marriage for girls is 18 years, and 21 years for boys. However, abject poverty has compelled much of the rural population to accept child marriages – and their equally illegal dowries – as an unavoidable reality. Almost half of Bangladesh’s 140 million people currently live in poverty, though the government maintains it’s striving to halve that number by 2015, under the UN millennium development goal.
The trend is compounded once more through the naivite of young, uneducated brides who remain unaware of their rights, and as a consequence, an estimated 40% of Bangladeshi women are married before their fifteenth birthday, while the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates a further one million girls are expected to wed before the age of 18 within the coming dacde.
The phenomena of child marriage is by no means restricted to Bangladesh, or South Asia. In some countries almost half of the female population has entered marriage by the age of 18, with figures such as:
- 76% in Niger
- 74% in the Democratic Republic of Congo
- 54% in Afghanistan
- 50% in India
Equally, the age of marriage varies substantially:
- In Ethiopia and West Africa, some girls get married at the age of 7
- A 1998 survey in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh found that nearly 14% of girls were married between 10-14
- In Kebbi State of northern Nigeria, the average age of marriage for girls is just over 11 years, compared to the national average of 17
For many, the tragedy is yet to come once married, for in countries such as Kenya and Zambia parents imagine that marriage will protect their daughters from HIV. Inevitably, this is not the case and studies in Kisumu, Kenya and in Ndola, Zambia, have revealed that higher rates of HIV infection are found in certain groups of married adolescent girls, compared with their unmarried, sexually active counterparts.
In addition to the aforementioned dangers, children also face an uncertain fate due to underage pregnancy – girls aged 10-14 are five times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than women aged 20-24, while girls ages 15-19 are twice as likely to die – and domestic violence. According to a study conducted by Jensen and Thornton,* women who marry younger are more likely to be beaten or threatened, and more likely to believe that a husband might be justified in beating his wife.
As poverty rises acceptance of such practices continues, leading vast numbers of women into restrictive roles from childhood and annihlating their rights. The actions of Habiba’s classmates is an inspiring step forward from those so young – particularly when the adult parents of her school friends were unable to speak out. However, with the emergence of groups such as BRAC, Adolescent Development Programme (ADP) in Bangladesh and the Indian Institute of Young Inspirers (IIYI) providing the means to educate young women in their rights, health issues, and pregnancy, a change may yet occur, albeit it slowly.
* Jensen R. and R. Thornton. ‘Early female marriage in the developing world’, Gender and Development. 2003. Vol. 11, no. 2 pp. 9-19.
Filed under: Asia
