This summer as I was doing my summer reading and my step mother stormed into my room showing me an article she read in the National Geographic June edition. Handing me the magazine folded open to the article she told me to read a part of it. That one part turned into the entire two page article, which ended with the statement “Newspapers were reporting that a bride from a village had been dropped off at a Sanaa hospital four days after her wedding. Sexual intercourse appeared to have ruptured the girl's internal organs, hospital officials said. She had bled to death. She was thirteen years old.” That last part stopped me cold, my younger sister, Danni, is thirteen; as of January 2013. Her daily life consists of waking up to prepare for school, arriving at school early to hang out with the friends she would like, and notice the boys her age that are cute, a normal seventh grader’s life. In the future she will be making much more serious decisions; choosing a college, day dreaming about the perfect spouse someday, etc. Throughout her life, my younger sister will be gifted with many choices to make; choices that I discovered don’t exist for girls her age in many third-world countries. In countries such as India, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and Yemen, girls my sister’s age are waking up and feeding their infants. Choosing whether she should do the dishes or make her husband breakfast first; day dreaming about living through the day. If a girl under the age of eighteen in any one of these stated countries believes she can make a decision concerning love, emotion, or marriage she is likely to be regarded to as naïve and disrespectful. However, in many cases it is not the young girl who is naïve and disrespectful. According to Lois Parshley, nine-year-old Arwa Abdu Muhammad was reported running out of her house going to a hospital and claiming that her husband had been raping and beating her for the last eight months; the authorities turned this nine year-old away. At the time of the decision her parents believed she would gain some social freedom and rise about poverty. When looking back at the choice they made for their daughter, they seem to be the naïve ones.
Child marriage is a serious issue that we, as a society, need to address. Although, this is not a prevalent issue in the United States, according to PBS, “over 45% of girls in South Asia and Africa are married by the time they are 18 years old; however the average age of marriage in Yemen is 12”, younger than my sister Danni.
Aside from many stunning statistics about how prevalent child marriage truly is, it is dangerous, especially once the child reaches puberty, when the girl becomes a mother to be. Pregnant teens, are at much higher risk of complications than that of a woman in her 20’s due to their bodies lack of readiness to carry a child, here in the United States, there are ridiculous television reality shows such as “sixteen and pregnant” and “teen mom”, however, in these third world countries, this is not just a reality show, it is reality. Also, PBS.org sites, “girls younger than 15 are five times more likely to die during the pregnancy or child birth than women who are physically prepared to carry a child.” “Pregnancy related deaths are the leading cause of demise in women ages 15-19 worldwide, a large fraction of this relating to pregnant child brides.” It isn’t just the mother at risk of mortality during pregnancy or delivery, the baby is as well. In an article produced by Amnesty International, Tahmina says, “she had three stillbirths and after this her husband began to beat her. As a result of the cruel beating she underwent, another baby died; then she miscarried while five months pregnant and her first born child was born deformed.”
According to amnesty.org 58% of all child brides report some sort of abuse at the hand of their husband, here we call that child abuse, but in these countries since it is their husband, it is okay. According to Sharon LaFraniere, when 17 year-old Nyambi was interviewed about her marriage, she said she was sold to a 70 year-old as the sacrifice of the family when she was 10 years-old. She is now leashed to her husband because of their two children. How many of the people you know are 17 or younger? Now how many of them are married with two children to a man the age of their grandpa? A similar story is that of 19 year-old Beatrice who was traded to a 63 year-old man when she was 14 because her father owed him a cow, the price of his daughter. She said “living with him is like prison, you have no rights.”
Along with the sexual abuse that occurs within the child marriages, many viruses are passed, especially AIDs. According to Carey L Biron, “most of the 39.5 million people suffering worldwide from AIDs live in Africa and south Asia, where child brides are most prevalent. Also, those living with AIDs in Africa has increased from 200,000 in 1990 to now in 2011 about four million, 2.1 million of those being children between the ages of 12 and 18, that is the equivalent of every person living in Houston, TX as of the 2010 census.” Lastly, Unicef USA says, “there are on average 400,000 children contract the AIDs virus each year, many occurring from sexual abuse within the child marriages.”
So how can we help limit the marriages occurring in adolescents in 3rd world countries? First, we need to raise awareness of the topic; of the people I asked within Woodland Park High School, 97% state “no” when asked if they are aware of the child bride situation around the world. We can achieve this through the media more than anything else, as is done in the award winning movie Eat Pray Love in which there is a portion where a young girl in India is preparing for her marriage. Next, we can introduce the topic into the work place and schools, to encourage the community to be involved, even if it is just passed on to one person at a time. Also in a survey taken at WPHS 83% of people claimed they would guess this was a serious issue but the best way to help is through education of the problem. Last, we could start donating time or money to charitable organizations, such as “The Hope Organization” or “School of New Hope” to build schools in south Asia and Africa in order to raise the chance of common education, lowering parents’ reason to want to better their daughter’s social status, because it will then be readily available. These organizations are also available online with instructions on how to donate at pbs.org.
In the end, child marriage is wrong, dangerous, and illegal, and needs to come to an end. The girls who undergo pregnancy have extremely high risks of mortality either for themselves or their infant. Along with this, if the infant is terminated before birth due to the lack of ability for the mother to carry the baby, often the woman will be sexually, physically, mentally, and emotionally degraded and abused. The process of child marriage is looked at by natives to be a blessing, when all it really is, is a curse the young girl is forced to live with. I have made a choice to raise awareness on this topic and tell society what is occurring. I want you to think about how much awareness could be raised if you told five people, and encouraged them to do the same because without our help to end this degrading occurrence, Unicef USA states, “there will be another 100 million child brides in South Asia and Africa in the next decade.” Think about the cost of a cow, about $800 on average. Now think of the cost of your daughter, sister, or mother. Priceless. In southern Asia and Africa, these two material items are equivalent. Please help band together to stop the abuse, and award these children with their right to Choice. ?
Works Cited
Amnesty International. "Unreported world in Nigeria-Child Brides." 06 January 2009. Amnesty International. Web Document. 19 May 2013.
Biron, Carey L. "Major Audit Urges Devolution of US AIDS programme." 21 Feburary 2013. Inter Press Service. Web Document. 19 May 2013.
LaFraniere, Sharon. "Forced to Marry Before Puberty, African Girls Pay Lasting Price." New York Times (2007): 2. Journal Article.
Parshley, Lois. 2 July 2008. Global Envision. Web Document. 12 May 2013.
PBS. "Child Mariage: What we know." 2010. NOW. Web Document. 16 May 2013.
Unicef USA. "Child Protection from voilence exploition and abuse." 12 December 2012. Unicef. Web document. 13 May 2013.