What is a child
marriage?Marriage should be a time for
celebration and joy – unless you are one of the 64 million girls around the
world forced into marriage before the age of 18.
Child marriage is a violation of child rights, and has a negative
impact on physical growth, health, mental and emotional development, and
education opportunities. It is defined as a marriage of a girl or boy before
the age of 18 and refers to both formal marriages and informal unions in which
children under the age of 18 live with a partner as if married.One in 3
girls in the developing world is married by age 18, 1 in 9 by the time she's
15.The United Nations Population Fund estimates that every year, more than
14 million adolescent and teen girls are married, almost always forced into the
arrangement by their parents. The countries with the highest rates of child marriage
are in sub-Saharan Africa, but those with the largest number of child brides
are in South Asia.Each day, 39.000 girls under the age of 18 become child brides. That’s
about one every two seconds.
Child marriage is the result of the interplay of economic and social forces. In
communities where the practice is prevalent, marrying a girl as a child is part
of a cluster of social norms and attitudes that reflect the low value accorded
to the human rights of girls. It is important to notice that child marriage
affects both boys and girls, but it is more common among girls. Child marriage
has lasting consequences on girls, from their health, education and social
development perspectives. These consequences last well beyond adolescence. One
of the most common causes of death for girls aged 15 to 19 in developing
countries was pregnancy and childbirth. Child brides are almost always married
to older menand lack the standing or skills to negotiate over sex or birth
control. That means many get pregnant soon after marriage, when their bodies
are too underdeveloped or too small to handle it. Girls younger than 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth
than women in their 20s, according to the International
Center for Research on Women.
UNICEF and UNFPA have joined forces through a Global Programme to Accelerate
Action to End Child Marriage. The programme was launched in 2015 to cover eight
states with moderate to high rates of child marriage, focusing on districts
with the highest incidence. Four of the states have shown promising decline in
the rates of child marriage over the past ten years – Bihar, Madhya Pradesh,
and Rajasthan – and four have had more moderate progress – Maharashtra,
Gujarat, Odisha, and West Bengal. For the first time, existing strategies in
areas like health, education, child protection, and water and sanitation, are
coming together to form a unique holistic programme with shared plans and
goals. Working in partnership with governments, civil society organizations and
young people themselves, methods that have already been proven to work will be
operated at scale.
HOW TO PREVENT IT? There are many causes
of child marriage in India and multiple barriers to its elimination. Hunger,
lower social status, chores, early marriage, school safety and sanitation are
all barriers preventing a girl from receiving a proper education. Education can be a life-saving
resource that establishes a vulnerable child’s sense of normalcy and builds
self-esteem and hope for the future. Many experts consider education an
essential humanitarian response to complex emergencies, closely following food, water and
shelter. Also having access to basic clean water and a decent toilet saves children's lives, gives women
an advantage in earning money and ensures a good food supply. Improved sanitation can keep a girl in
school by making facilities available to her when she reaches puberty. Education empowers women: one additional
school year can increase a woman’s earnings by 10% to 20%.
HEEALS(Health, Education, Environment And
Livelihood Society), is an organization directly involved in girls education
and health in India. It is working on Water Sanitation, Menstrual Hygiene and
Children Education projects in seven states. Through spreading education on
Water, Sanitation and Hygiene and organizing WASH and MH workshop, HEEALS is
working to increase the attendance rates of girls in schools who drop out from
school due to child marriage. HEEALS works in marginalized communities, slum
schools, schools in unauthorised colonies, orphanages and refugee camps to
increase the attendance rates of pupils in schools who leave their studies,
reduce the number of diseases and deaths and improve the health of people
across Indian society.
- Caterina
WASH Intern
REFERENCES:
· UNICEF India Final report 2018
· United Nations Children’s Fund, Ending Child Marriage:
Progress and prospects, UNICEF, New York, 2014.
· International Institute for Population Sciences and Macro
International, National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), 2015-16: State Fact
Sheet for Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya, Maharashtra, Odisha, Pradesh, Rajasthan and
West Bengal, IIPS, Mumbai, 2016.
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