Photo credit: Population Council/India |
Child marriage is one of the largest, most neglected human rights abuses
in the developing world today. Over the next decade, if present marriage patterns continue, more than 100 million girls will be married before they reach 18—“children” as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Marriage below the age of 18 is widely practiced, and, in some settings, a substantial proportion of girls will marry at 15 or younger, often to older men. Significantly elevated health risks and poverty frequently are the norm for the youngest, first-time mothers and their children. Married girls face other risks, with marriage bringing an abrupt, unprepared, and unprotected initiation into sexual relations. In the context of the growing HIV epidemic, child marriage may expose girls, under pressure to become pregnant, to HIV infection or other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). In many countries, the low age of marriage and associated childbearing also drives population growth, shortening the years between generations. Through its new project, “Protecting Girls’ Rights Across the Marital Boundary,” the Population Council is addressing child marriage from health, human rights, and social development perspectives. The project builds on the Council’s eight years of research on policies and interventions to ease the transition to adulthood for young people in more than a dozen countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. The Council is working in partnership with U.N. agencies, government ministries, international and local organizations, and other research groups to provide evidence to support the end of child marriage, create schooling options and safe spaces for adolescent girls, and develop appropriate HIV-protection strategies for married girls. As Judith Bruce, director of the Council’s Gender, Family, and Development program, has emphasized, “We can’t address the world’s demographic and health challenges without upholding the rights and improving the opportunities for coming-of-age girls in the poorest countries.” The Council’s focus on supporting girls in their transitions to adulthood takes many forms: Increasing access to school and improving schooling experiences; Defining appropriate health and service paradigms for unmarried adolescent girls; Expanding safe, appropriate livelihood opportunities for older adolescent girls; Expanding health services, social supports, and opportunities for married adolescents; and Encouraging girls to participate in public activities that build leadership and decisionmaking skills, physical strength, and social mobility.
For example:
In collaboration with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Youth, Sports, and Culture, the Population Council completed two surveys of adolescents aged 10 to 19 in the capital city of Addis Ababa and in Amhara, a rural region with extremely high rates of child marriage (50 percent of girls wed by age 15; 80 percent by age 18). Eighteen percent of the girls interviewed in Addis Ababa migrated to the city in response to threats of child marriage. These girls often ended up alone, in dire poverty, engaging in low-paid, often dangerous work; and, despite the presence of many youth-serving programs, only seven percent of the girls surveyed had been reached. The Council has continued working with the ministry to design two interventions targeting vulnerable adolescents: one in Addis Ababa to promote girls’ safety and social networks, the other in the Amhara region to upgrade schools and encourage girls to stay in school and engage parental support for delayed marriage through livelihood activities.
Situated in two rural sites in India, the First-time Parents Project is testing ways to help young wives who are newly married, first-time pregnant, and/or postpartum increase their knowledge of reproductive health and their ability to act in their own interests.
During the period surrounding marriage and first birth, the girl, her husband, and her extended family may be most open to change. To reach these socially isolated girls, the Council, in collaboration with the Child In Need Institute and Deepak Charitable Trust, developed an approach that includes in-home visits, family discussions, and the creation of over 60 community-based women’s educational and social groups. These and other projects are contributing knowledge about—and drawing attention to—the practice of child marriage. More information, including specific briefing sheets on child marriage in Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Zambia, is available at www.popcouncil.org/ta/mar.html. (Return to issue contents)
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