PROJECT
Berhane Hewan: Supporting Married and Unmarried Girls in Rural Ethiopia  

In the Amhara region of Ethiopia, rates of child marriage are among the highest in the world. Half of all girls in Amhara are married before their 15th birthday. Population Council researchers conducted a survey of more than 2,900 adolescent boys and girls in Amhara and Addis Ababa, where many girls flee when they are trying to avoid arranged marriages or to escape marriages that have already occurred. As described by girls in Amhara:

• Marriage effectively forced girls into having unwanted, uninformed sexual relations with a relative stranger.
• Ninety-five percent of the girls surveyed did not know their husband before marriage, and 85 percent were given no forewarning that they were going to be married.
• More than two-thirds of married girls reported that they had not started menstruating when they had sex for the first time.
• Not surprisingly, many of these marital unions are unstable, and 12 percent of girls in Amhara aged 10–19 are already divorced.

"I hate early marriage. I was married at an early age and my in-laws forced me to sleep with my husband and he made me suffer all night. After that, whenever day becomes night, I get worried thinking that it will be like that. This is what I hate most." (Amhara girl, age 11, married at age 5)

Berhane Hewan (meaning “Light for Eve” in Amharic) is a project underway in Amhara designed to assist unmarried girls by imparting the knowledge, skills, and resources they need to avoid child marriage.

The program promotes functional literacy, life skills, reproductive health education, and opportunities for saving money. In developing the project, local Ministry of Youth and Sports staff felt strongly that the program needed to address the economic motives for the practice of child marriage. Accordingly, economic incentives were added to encourage families to allow their daughters to participate in girls’ groups that meet five days per week, and to remain in school.

The project has already received an enthusiastic response from the community—over 750 girls have joined Berhane Hewan. In addition, a parallel activity is offered for married girls, who meet once a week to obtain much-needed health information, peer interaction, and social support.

After two years of implementation, Council researchers undertook an impact evaluation among adolescent girls in the pilot site as well as comparable girls in a control site. The evaluation found significantly fewer girls in the experimental area had been married during early adolescence (ages 10–14) compared to girls of similar age in the control site. Among married girls, girls living in the project site were nearly three times more likely to use family planning methods.

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Population Council researchers

Annabel Erulkar, Tekle-Ab Mekbib

Non-Council collaborator

Ministry of Youth and Sports

Donors

UK Department for International Development

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

The Turner Foundation, Inc.

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