According to UNICEF, any marriage conducted when one or either of the partners is below 18 years of age, violates the human rights of the minor. Unfortunately, a quarter of women in the age bracket of 20 – 24 years were once child brides. Even when a child lives with a man before formalizing the marriage and continues to care for that person in the hope that when she achieves the legal age they will get married, her rights are still contravened.

Why child marriage takes place?

There are many reasons why girls get married including perceived preservation her family’s honor, culture and religion. The other overwhelming reason for the practice is poverty. Girls Not Brides, a website dedicated to stopping this inhuman behavior, asserts, “Poverty is one of the main drivers of child marriage. Child brides are more likely to be poor and to remain poor.”

Economic impact of dowry

In a situation of acute poverty, marrying off a child leaves the family with one less mouth to feed, educate and clothe. In addition, marrying off a young child even to a man twice her age has monetary gain. According to Girls Not Brides, “Girls from poor families are nearly twice as likely to marry before 18 as girls from wealthier families.”

Poverty and early marriage

This assertion is supported by statistics whereby in Mali, Niger, Bangladesh and Mozambique, where more than 50% of girls become wives while underage, three quarters of the population lives below the poverty line. Lorraine Robinson, writing in One.org, presents the grim statistics that in developing countries such as the ones mentioned above, a third of girls get married before the age of 18.

Snared in poverty

Unfortunately, these girls end up in a poverty trap. Girls who are married early either do not go to schools or fail to complete elementary education. This denies them the opportunity to better their lives through advancement in education. In the homes they get married in, these young brides cannot improve the financial situations, not even those of their children.

An evil repeated

In addition, unless much sensitization is done among women who were once child brides, they will marry off their daughters in the same way. This is because they are trapped in poverty cycles and have to marry off their young daughters in the false hope that the bride price will life them above the poverty line. If women empowerment is to make an impact, child marriages must be stopped.

©EthLeen

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Stealing the innocence of a young generation

It is for this reason that child marriage is an evil that should be condemned by all, including men. According to UNICEF, “Marriage before the age of 18 is a fundamental violation of human rights.” There is no justification whatsoever for this cruelty to children who should be playing and studying for a better future. UNICEF further asserts,

Child marriage often compromises a girl’s development by resulting in early pregnancy and social isolation, interrupting her schooling, limiting her opportunities for career and vocational advancement and placing her at increased risk of domestic violence.

Global child marriage statistics

The International Centre for Research on Women, while summarizing data presented by UNICEF in 2014, indicates that Niger had the highest prevalence of child marriages in the world. Specifically, 75% of girls in this Western African country are married before attaining the age of 18 years. This trend appears to affect the developing world more considering that a third of girls become wives before they reach eighteen years.

Child marriages spawn illiteracy

Back to Niger. Girls Not Brides, a website that advocates for the end of child marriage, opines that is some areas like Diffa the prevalence of this evil is 89%, almost universal. This in turn impacts education since 81% of women who are aged between 20 and 24 years are illiterate. This is essentially an entire generation of young girls, robbed of childhood, youth and education.

Acting to stem the tide

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has been partnering with the Niger government since 2012 in an initiative called Action for Adolescent Girls, to curb the vice. One of the main targets is to lobby the government to change the legal age for marriage from 15 to 19 years. Other reasons for this practice, according to UNICEF, are “poverty, the perception that marriage will provide ‘protection’, family honour, social norms, customary or religious laws that condone the practice, an inadequate legislative framework and the state of a country’s civil registration system.”

© EthLeen

The post Niger – the Child Marriage Capital of the World appeared first on Alaafia African Family Resource Center.