By Amanda Aluthge
Imagine this.
You’re an 11 year old girl.
You haven’t been exposed to the real world yet.
Your dream is to own every doll in the world or eat the candy you’ve heard of, at least once in your life - nothing else. You haven’t had your first boyfriend yet, in fact you haven’t even thought of it, you don’t even know the real meaning of the term. You’ve only ever heard of the word “marriage” once. You know it’s a term used to describe the relationship between your father and mother but you don’t know how it happens and what happens after it. You just heard that it only happens when two individuals love each other. It’s a usual Tuesday, you just finished school, you’re drinking water from a tin can, and eating rice, with 2 pieces of some type of vegetable you don’t know the name of but you like to imagine it’s chicken or fish because you at that age where your imagination is open Then, your mother tells you that you’re going to be married in 3 days. When you ask your mother who you love, she does not respond. Tears form in her eyes, her guilt pricks through her worn out nerves. You don’t know what to think, you don’t know how to feel, so you play a guessing game, “who do I love?”, you would think, being the naive, little girl you are. Imagine being her, imagine being this 11 to 15 year old girl who has no sense of what is going on, has not even reached an age at which they can disagree because they do not have any idea of what is going on and does not know what questions to ask and what time, so you have to stay quiet. A man comes the next day, he hands a few pieces of printed paper and silver coins to your mother and he smiles at you, not a smile of apology nor one of love, one of achievement and pride. He takes you to his house. Your world narrows immediately. You feel isolated. Imagine being the girl who has to face this situation on a random day in which she is married off to a man that her family only met a day ago, or may not have met at all, or only know of him by the price tag he has placed on their little girl. You won’t be able to go to school again which means you won’t have a childhood, you won’t have an education, you won’t be able to get a job in the future with your level of education and you will become part of a global problem. Child marriages.
There are 640 million girls who have been forced to live the life of this naive, little girl and share the same story, pain, confusion and trauma, because of reasons such as poverty, reinforcing social ties and conservative outlooks. Every year, 12 million girls are married, and two of these girls who fell to the wrath of these troubles was Mariama, a 13 year old from Niger, Dosso, and Nujood Ali.
The Story of Mariama
^ Mariama and her mother at work, attempting to earn a few precious coins to survive.
Mariama was not aware that she was getting married and sent away to live with a stranger she did not even know the name of, until a day before. Mariama was 200 USD. She shifted from a girl that her mother loved and cared for 13 years of her life to an object that can be sold.
The stranger was a local market trader in his 20s. Mariam was only 13.
Mariama was clueless as to how she should feel, and anything she did feel wasn't positive. The thoughts of marriage consumed her thoughts and life, she felt embarrassed that she was sold away so easily without any hesitation from her mother. Mariama took the role of someone in their 30s at the age of 13, having to take care of her husband, household, and deal with the pressure of having to be a wife. She watched children of her age play outside while she remained inside her house, obeying her husband. Teenagers looked at her as if she were from another planet, wondering why she looked so young yet so mature.
"I've been sad since I found out I was getting married", Mariama says, "I can't eat. At night I can't sleep because that's all I think about. I don't even go outside anymore because I feel everyone is looking at me, as a new bride."
Mariama's mother explains: "In our Touareg tradition, we don't tell girls that they are to be married. They just find out the day it happens…I got married when I was 10 years old.”
Many traditions have been implemented in different cultures which state that children who marry at a young age are “pure” and of true responsibility. Whilst many cultures have some aspects of truth, and can be reasoned to be right, some traditions cause harm and, even if it does help many people make sense of their lives and find their own goals and motivation, they raise trauma in individuals. This was proven by Mariama and her mother, where her mother went through the same experience that Mariama went through, yet still continued to accept the dowry to find a source of survival in a perishing economy.
The Story of Nujood Ali
^ Nujood Ali – a small 9 year old girl who experienced the reality of a cruel world at a young age.
Nujood Ali was forced into an arranged marriage with a man in his thirties when she was nine years old.
Ali was stranded in a rural isolated village strained to live with her husband away from her parents and sisters.
Ali didn’t get the chance to live the regular life of a 9 year old. She went through some of her worst months during the marriage. She experienced torture in the form of domestic abuse in the hand of her in-laws and her husband.
Unable to endure the verbal and physical abuse, Ali fled two months after the wedding. Even as a 9 year old, her first instinct wasn’t to run off to her family, instead going to a courthouse in a taxi using a few valuable coins given for bread money.
Nujood Ali later ended up being the first child bride of Yemen to win a divorce.
Ali decided to take on the role of an inspiring citizens in society, who educates others of “child brides”, and the solutions, mindsets, and procedures that can be applied to avoid these depressing experiences of young girls around the world. She is a central figure in Yemen’s movement against forced marriage and child marriage, and is the author of a profound book, “I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced”, which she wrote with the help of French journalist, Delphine Minoui.
Barricading and Preventing Child Marriage
In a recent interview, Nujood Ali mentioned a tribal proverb that led to her experience, ““To guarantee a happy marriage, marry a nine-year-old girl.” In order to barricade these traumatic situations, citizens in both underdeveloped and developed countries must be educated on aspects of mental and physical wellbeing and how child marriages crush the minds of young girls and boys who are the core of the future generation.
Educating these citizens will bring the truth to light, and bring the realization of the emotional distress the young victims go through which affects their present and future. This is because the lack of education, youth, and childhood memories they have, creates a psychological impact on their brains.
Solutions regarding the poverty of these individuals must also be drawn attention to since the absence of finance also puts these young girls and boys at risk. Many citizens who do not have access to finance resort to selling their kids, leading to them becoming child brides at a young age.
UNICEF believes that ending child marriage is vital for the inspiration and well-being of the youth. They do this by focusing on those victims who have been faced with the most danger, and promoting their education and organizing their family’s finances and survival, to give them more responsibility, justice, and control over what they want to do in the future and achieve the dreams they’ve always wanted to carry out.
It is believed that it is more likely that a girl who is forced into marriage as a child will come from a society where the position of girls is degraded and devalued. This leads to the girl not realizing her true potential and having less self-awareness, which is why child marriages can be prevented if the majority of the world population has access to primary or secondary education, and are able to find jobs that give them livable wages. Further, UNICEF aims towards reaching out to different cultures to discuss the importance of moving away from the mindset of traditional and discriminatory views on the value of girls and the significance of their education.
UNICEF also maintains programs around the world in many countries and communities, to tackle the issues and fix mindsets of those who support child marriage, to influence them to take on a different viewpoint. They have also taken different methods to prevent child marriage such as support for hotlines and organizations that offer direct support to girls, many of whom struggle to find lawyers for years.
Various programs held by different organizations around the world focus on engaging with local elders, religious leaders, and ministers, and educating them on the traumatizing effects that child marriage can have on society as a whole. Once they are aware of this knowledge and they will take an interest in making actions towards preventing child marriage. Educational and one-to-one sessions can be held with girls and parents in villages.
Many studies show that women are able to understand the effects of child marriages on other women better than men. In many communities that practice child marriage, it is likely that more girls are sold off than boys because of the “lack of value” that is linked with girls which further explains why women are kept out of the decision making and influencing the steps taken towards issues raised in the country. It is likely that only a female minister is likely to understand the raw emotion that a young girl goes through in being married off before they mature, and the memories, moments, and events they miss as a result of it. This is why it is vital that women are able to voice their perspectives and concerns, to highlight women’s rights and why issues such as child marriage should be prevented, as well as the laws that support the action.
Have the steps taken been successful to date?
“It is becoming less common. Still, it affects 650 million girls and women around the world, and global progress is not fast enough to achieve the SDG target of eliminating child marriage by 2030.” - a UNICEF address in an article from 2021.
Many governments are now identifying the prominence of addressing child marriage and making changes to society and the economy to meet the UN Sustainable Development goals. The majority of girls are supported in cases of child marriage, delaying having children and finishing their higher education which will be significant for future generations, and overcoming poverty.
Methods to solve current child marriages and guiding future generations have been listed below:
Promoting gender equality
Empowerment of women in the parliament/society
The banning of child marriages in many countries
Reducing forced marriages, leading to less teen pregnancies
Improve maternal health, reduce vulnerability of STDs
What can you do to help victims of child marriages?
Although it may seem difficult to help victims, there are many different methods, both financial and non-financial.
Financial methods –
Donate money to charities/grass root organizations
Some well-known charities working towards preventing child marriages include:
Girls Not Brides
Saarthi Trust
Tostan
SERVE
Non-financial methods –
Follow and promote any charities or social media accounts who work towards funding victims and education the world about various cases/the effects of child marriage
Research on child marriage and educate others around you – start with you friends and family
Share articles/blogs similar to this one on your social media platforms, or with your classmates, family and friends.
As the cases of child marriage keep on fluctuating, society has to continue to understand and perceive, avoid egocentrism, and empathize with the victims. Whether the situation carries on, worsens, betters or the impacts grow is difficult to say with different numbers of victims who choose to open up or not about child marriage. There are also various child marriage cases that many are not aware of, such as in low income countries. We cannot depend on the numbers so we must continue working towards improving it until it is proved and the numbers lower.
Become a part of the movement. Be the person who speaks up about the issue. Be the voice of the young girl who still does not have a choice. .
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