Kathy Selvaggio's blog

Child Marriage: We Have Solutions

2008-05-20T08:00:00-04:00

"My father and his father, they talked to each other. They wanted to [marry] their children, but I was not informed. I was not asked. At that time, I thought of killing myself."

These are the words of Surita Shrestha Balami, a Nepali girl who was married at 16. She is one of 51 million girls who every year are forced to tie the knot before 18. When Surita and other girls marry young, they are more likely to stop going to school and to live a life of poverty. They often face serious health complications in childbirth and their children are more likely to die before their first birthday.

In these ways, this age-old traditional practice is setting countries back in reaching key development targets and making U.S. development assistance less effective. Research from the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) finds that child marriage "hot spots" are receiving substantial U.S. development assistance, including from White House-signature development initiatives such as PEPFAR, the U.S. global AIDS plan, and the Millennium Challenge Account, a new U.S. foreign assistance program.

The Bride Price Bills now are before Congress to curb child marriage as part of broader development efforts (H.R. 3175 and S. 1998). Passage of these bills will ultimately strengthen U.S. development assistance programs. This should not be an issue of controversy between Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Yet few Republicans are supporting this legislation.

This is surprising, especially given that we know what works to increase age of marriage in communities where the practice is common. In India and Ethiopia, for example, we've learned that interventions that involve parents and community leaders can be successful in a relatively short time. The Life Skills Education Program, developed by ICRW and the Institute for Health Management, Pachod (IHMP), worked with a community in Maharashtra, India, to develop a one-year life skills course for girls that focuses on self-sufficiency and covers a wide range of practical lessons, from how to use the post office to how to negotiate conversations with their parents. Within two years of implementing this program, the median age of marriage for girls increased by one year to 17. In Ethiopia, Pathfinder collaborates with local partners to form early marriage cancellation committees, which bring together various community leaders - administration officials, teachers, religious leaders and parents - to help prevent child marriages. Community members and girls themselves can report a pending underage marriage to the committees, which alert local law enforcement to take action. In one year, these committees helped prevent more than 9,000 marriages in Amhara and 3,000 in Tigray - two regions in Ethiopia where child marriage rates reach 80 percent and higher.

Given the dire consequences of child marriage and the fact that it's a development problem that we have program solutions for, it would seem that even social conservatives who might be wary of possible reproductive health connections to the issue would be able to support the legislation. After all, putting an end to child marriage has clear implications for keeping girls in school and improving infant and maternal mortality rates.

Watch the Video!

To help give momentum to this issue, ICRW has launched a video campaign that brings to the fore the reality of our continued inaction. The six-minute video, The Bride Price, features gripping photographs and first-person testimonies of child brides in Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Nepal. The photos, taken by Pulitzer Prize award-winning photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair, document real child marriages and offer a rare look into the lives of child brides and parents. The video, produced by ICRW and MediaStorm, also gives insight into the practice of child marriage from Saranga Jain, one of ICRW's lead researchers on the issue.

Building Awareness of Child Marriage

2007-10-09T08:07:43-04:00

The recent conviction of Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, on two felony counts of rape by accomplice in the arranged marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin hopefully drove home to the U.S. public that child marriage is a crime. In fact, child marriage - marriage before age 18 - is outlawed in most countries worldwide. Yet in many of these same countries, child marriage persists.

In Bangladesh, India, Mali, Nepal and Uganda, for example, more than half of girls are married younger than 18 - some as young as 8 or 9. (For a list of the countries with the highest rates of child marriage, visit http://www.icrw.org/docs/2006_cmtoolkit/cm_all.pdf, and look to p. 13)

The PBS/NOW documentary, "Child Brides: Stolen Lives," airs Oct. 12 on public broadcasting stations throughout the United States, exposing the wrenching life changes that young girls face in India, Niger and Guatemala when they are sold into marriage, often against their will. The documentary also highlights how people can act locally and globally to solve the problem.

This hour-long film reveals the devastating consequences of child marriage on girls, their families and communities. Child brides typically experience high rates of childbirth complications, HIV infection and partner violence. They drop out of school to devote themselves to maintaining households and raising children - while still children themselves. Child brides often are married poor and remain that way, trapping families in a vicious cycle of poverty.

Despite these sobering facts, the issue of child marriage barely has registered on the radars of U.S. policy makers and the U.S. foreign policy agenda. Too often, policy makers respond that the United States should not get involved because the practice is rooted in cultural or religious traditions. Yet awareness trumped "culture" in helping to shift norms condoning the practice of female genital cutting. We hope the PBS documentary similarly will generate greater awareness on how child marriage harms girls, their families and communities.

Fortunately, a few enlightened members of Congress are trying to bring an end to child marriage. In late July, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) introduced HR 3175, The International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act of 2007. In August, Sens. Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE) introduced a parallel bill in the Senate, S 1998. The Senate bill currently has 10 co-sponsors and includes the backing of U.S. presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Christopher Dodd (D-CT).

The bipartisan legislation would direct the U.S. State Department to report on child marriage for high-prevalence countries in the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. Additionally, both bills would authorize modest funds for USAID and other agencies to incorporate child marriage prevention strategies and activities into existing programs on girls' education, maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, economic opportunities, and legal reform. It would also authorize funds to initiate pilot projects that later would be evaluated to determine best practices in ending child marriage. (See a one-page summary of the House bill here and the Senate bill here.)

Ordinary U.S. citizens serving on a Utah jury didn't allow tradition to exonerate Warren Jeffs. Nor should the U.S. public accept that 14-year-olds who are married off by their parents in Ethiopia or Nigeria is acceptable because it is part of a long tradition in those countries. The same outrage against child marriage in Utah and other parts of the United States should be translated into support for legislation in Congress to wipe out the practice wherever it exists.

Preventing Child Marriage

2006-09-14T08:30:24-04:00

Kathy Selvaggio is Senior Policy Advocate for the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW).

The media images and descriptions of young girls being wed to much older men in places such as Afghanistan, India and Ethiopia have captured the public mind in recent months. These reports tell the story of young girls being sold off, often for a modest bride price, to a life of poverty, social isolation, early and frequent childbearing -- even domestic violence and early death due to higher risks of maternal mortality or HIV/AIDS. The New York Times, National Public Radio, Wall Street Journal, Glamour magazine, and mainstream America get the urgency of eradicating child marriage. But most U.S. policymakers are not reacting. Why?

You would think child marriage would be a nonpartisan issue that would rally support even in Washington, D.C.'s current partisan environment. But the going has been slow and hard. After more than two years in the making, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) introduced the "Child Marriage Prevention and Protection Act" this past July, with Senators Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY). Rep. Betty McCollum (D-CA) is ready to introduce a counterpart bill in the House.

The bill also has a handful of strong supporters in the Office for International Women's Issues in the State Department, as well as in USAID. But where is everyone else?

True, marriage under age of 18 is still sanctioned in nearly all U.S. states with parental consent, in some states as young as 12 or 13 (Massachusetts and New Hampshire) - a disturbing fact that might give some Members of Congress pause. Congressional inattention to international human rights, women's and development issues is no surprise, especially in the months leading up to elections, which are hotly contested this year. And neither is an absence of bipartisan cooperation.

Some of the lackluster response might simply be due to low level of awareness about child marriage among Members of Congress. And even if they are made aware of the problem, some revert to the age-old response that we cannot interfere with other nation's cultural traditions.

Still, encouraging girls to delay marriage until after age 18 (thus preventing them from closing off options for their futures) and supporting the more than 50 million girls worldwide who are already married should not be especially controversial. Many of us have had adolescent daughters at one time or another. Marriage, early pregnancy, domestic violence, and maternal mortality are the last things we'd want for them or for other girls worldwide.

Which is why we are eager to get a broad base of support for the legislation. The bill calls upon the U.S. State Department and USAID to develop a comprehensive strategy to address child marriage within their existing development programs. It also requires that the U.S. State Department regularly report on child marriage in its annual Human Rights Report.

We hope that more organizations will endorse the bill and that people will call upon their Senators to cosponsor it. We also hope to find a Republican champion in the U.S. House of Representatives to join Rep. Betty McCollum in introducing a counterpart bill in the House. In short, this bill needs all the help it can get!

To endorse the bill, or to otherwise get involved in the efforts, feel free to contact me at kselvaggio@icrw.org.

Editor's note: For more information on child marriage, check out Adrienne Germain's post.