The downsides of early marriage
On a cold Saturday night in April, Halima’s mother tells her that a man is coming to ask for her hand in marriage. The 13-year-old stares at her mother in confusion. She cannot understand what it means.
“You don’t look happy,” observes her mother.
“Mama, what do you want me to say? I don’t know,” she exclaims.
“You are going to get married next week – that is what it means. Your husband has promised to give us plenty of money for your bride price. That means your father can buy new cattle and expand his farm. It also means I can have a change of clothes for the first time and feel proud at our women’s meeting. Halima, it is a new dawn for us, you have to be happy you are getting married to a rich man,” her mother explains.
Halima is one of the many girls in northern Nigeria who are victims of early marriages. For many millions of young people, adolescence is a critical passage in which they gain life experience through schooling, job training, work experiences, community activities, youth groups and relationships. Majority also have their first sexual experiences during the adolescent years.
But for some others, adolescence is a stage they do not look forward to as they are given away in marriage to men of the same age with their fathers or even older. A recent case in Nigeria involved Ahmed Yerima, a senator in Nigeria and former governor of Zamfara State. Yerima reportedly married a 13-year-old Egyptian girl in Abuja in April for a bride price of $100,000. The senator is also said to have earlier married a 13-year-old who is now 14 and a half, whom he divorced to make way for the new bride from Egypt. The case has generated a lot furore both within and outside Nigeria and the Egyptian government has expressed anger at the incident as Child Right Act is highly effective in the country.
Iheoma Idudu, executive director, Alliance for Africa, observes that early marriage is still prevalent in Nigeria because it is largely a monetised society where the right of the child is sold for a juicy bride price. “Adolescence is a critical stage in a child’s life when he or she learns the social and gender norms that prevail in his or her communities; some protect a child’s health and rights, and some do not. These norms confront girls with special challenges – including restrictions on their independence and mobility, inequality in educational and employment opportunities, pressure to marry and start bearing children at an early age, and unequal power relations that limit their control over their sexual and reproductive lives,” she explains.
In addition, Idudu observes that throughout much of the world, families and societies treat girls and boys unequally, with girls disproportionately facing privation, lack of opportunity and lower levels of investment in their health, nutrition and education. “Gender-based discrimination continues in adolescence and is often a constant feature of adulthood. Prevailing gender norms also stymie adolescent girls’ access to schooling and employment opportunities. Institutionalised legal inequality underpins laws that keep land, money and other economic resources out of girls’ and women’s hands, closing off avenues for redress of discrimination and creating the conditions for gender-based violence and exploitation,” she says.
Unequal power relations between females and males lead to widespread violations of health and human rights. Among the most persistent and pernicious are early or child marriage, sexual trafficking, sexual violence and coercion, and female genital cutting. Recent international agreements, changes in countries’ laws and policies, research efforts and a variety of programmes explicitly address discrimination against girls and women, challenging the underlying values that perpetuate gender inequality.
According to a UNDP report, most countries have declared 18 as the minimum legal age of marriage. Despite the sanctions on child marriage, however, more than 100 million girls are expected to marry in the next decade. While the practice has decreased globally over the last 30 years, it remains common in rural areas and among the poorest of the poor. Impoverished parents often believe that child marriage will protect their daughters. In fact, however, it results in lost development opportunities, limited life options and poor health.
Despite a shift towards later marriages in many parts of the world, a UNDPC statistics shows that 82 million girls in developing countries who are now aged 10 to 17 will be married before their 18th birthday. In some countries, the majority of girls still marry before age 18. These include 60 percent in Nepal, 76 percent in Niger and 50 percent in India.
Bimbola Adeosun, executive director of a non-governmental organisation, says factors perpetuating early marriage include poverty, parental desire to ensure sexual relations within marriage, lack of educational or employment opportunities for girls, the sense that girls’ main value is as wives and mothers, and dowry systems. Girls who become pregnant may face extreme pressure from families and communities to marry.
The age at which people marry in a particular culture reflects the way family life is organised and the opportunities young men and women have as they assume adult responsibilities. Early marriage violates a number of girls’ human rights and vastly increases the risks to girls’ and infants’ health and opportunities.
Child marriage is a health issue as well as a human rights violation. Because it takes place almost exclusively within the context of poverty and gender inequality, it also has social, cultural and economic dimensions. Married adolescents have been neglected from the global adolescent reproductive health agenda because of the incorrect assumption that their married status ensures them a safe passage to adulthood. Married adolescents are typified by large spousal age gaps, limited social support due to social isolation, limited educational attainment and no schooling options, intense pressure to become pregnant, increased risk of maternal and infant mortality, increased vulnerability to HIV and other STIs, restricted social mobility/freedom of movement, little access to modern media (TV, radio, newspapers), lack of skills to be viable to the labour market, among others.
According to the 2004 UNFPA Child Marriage advocacy package, it is no coincidence that the same countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East that have high rates of child marriage are those with high poverty rates, birth rates and death rates, greater incidence of conflict and civil strife, lower levels of overall development, including schooling, employment, and health care.
By: ANNE AGBAJE