(OPEN)
On Plugged In…
Married too soon.
Each year…
12 million girls…
children under the age of 18…
are denied their most basic rights..
forced to give up their education…
career opportunities …
and their innocence.
Not by choice…
but often…
because their culture says so.
We will hear from child brides…
and activists who have set the goal
of ending child marriages
by the year 2030.
when we look at the challenges…
and the cost of doing nothing…
On this week’s episode…
of Plugged In…
“The Worth of a Girl”
(Greta)
Hello and welcome to Plugged in.
I'm Greta Van Susteren.
12 million - is a staggering number and it is the estimated number of under-aged girls, children, who each year get married.
Some are forced, some do it out of obligation and some, out of desperation.
And the problem of child brides is not one confined to lower-income countries.
We are about to introduce you to four young women from different parts of the world. All of them, with one thing in common.
(4 Girls, 4 Countries)
Text:
Every child bride’s circumstances can differ. But the end result is often the same.
SOMAYA: Locator: Afghanistan
“My name is Somaya
I was studying in seventh grade. But 10 days before my final exam I was married.”
ORKIDA DRIZA: Locator: Albania
“My name is Orkida Driza, and I was married when I was 13½ years old.”
KATHLEEN BURNS: Locator: USA
“OK, um, Kathleen Burns. I live in Dyersburg, Tennessee.
I work all the time, take care of my baby and the husband. That's about it.”
MWANHAMISI: Locator: Tanzania
“One night, my mother told me, "Someone wants a domestic worker."
Later, mom told me someone had proposed to marry me.
She said the man was a good person and young, but I said ‘no.’ I cried.”
(text: “Pain, Regret & Obligation”)
SOMAYA:
“Anytime I said I wanted to go school, my in-laws and my husband would beat me and tell me, "You can't go to school."
My husband was young and immature, and his parents would encourage him to beat me and insult me.
But I never complained to my father or to anyone. I just lived with it.”
KATHLEEN BURNS:
“I got pregnant underage. And that was kind of what had us go ahead and get married, so I wouldn't send him to jail.
A lot of people look down on him for it and stuff. That's kind of why he didn't want to do this at first.
You know, but, like I told him, 'I don't care what anybody thinks.'
I love him, you know. It is what it is. I did not graduate.
I do regret, you know, not finishing school. Growing up way too fast.
You know, that's just stuff you shouldn't do when you're a kid, honestly. I see that all now. I didn't see it then, though. So, and you can't change it.”
ORKIDA DRIZA:
“One of my older sisters suffered from a grave kidney disease.
My mom decided to marry me off so my sister could have an operation, because the woman who wanted me to marry her son was on friendly terms with the doctors at the town hospital.
It was an obligation to my family and I did it to save my sister’s life.”
(text: “Taking a Stand”)
MWANHAMISI:
“I called the police, who asked for the groom's name and the marriage date. The night before the wedding a local official came to our house to ask whether I wanted to marry.
When I said no, he halted the ceremony.”
ORKIDA DRIZA:
“I call on all mothers: Even though we were married off while young, we should at least give a good education to our kids.”
(text: But decisions sometimes become patterns from one generation to the next.”)
ORKIDA DRIZA:
“When my oldest, Bleona, was 11 years old, someone from the Egyptian community came to ask to marry her. I had no other way. I thought, whatever God had in store for me, even sleeping in the streets, at least my daughter would have shelter.”
(Text: “While some may accept their situation, others take steps to rebuild.”)
KATHLEEN BURNS:
“It is hard, but other than that I don't really miss nothing, you know? I'm fine with how everything turned out with me.”
MWANHAMISI:
“I began to study textiles at a center. My dream is to become a great fashion designer.”
(text: And there are those left to grieve over a stolen youth.)
SOMAYA:
“I lost my childhood. I loved school and going to school. But they wouldn't let me.”
(GRETA)
Stolen childhoods.
And these young women, girls are just a few of the many we profiled in a recent series produced by Voice of America, titled “the Worth of a Girl.”
Lina Correa is with VOA's Latin American division and is one of the many VOA journalists who took part in this global production.
(Greta Van Susteren interviews Lina Correa)
GVS: Thank you for joining us.
LC: Thank you very much.
GVS: This is one of the reasons I love VOA. It does projects like this, what drew you to this project?
LC: Well, the first goal of this project was to bring awareness, to raise awareness of an issue that affect millions around the world, children, girls. Even their families, and it is not in the headlines. It is unbelievable that in the age of women empowerment. This issue is not in the headlines so that was the main goal, but it was the first time for VOA in many aspects. It was a unique opportunity to tell a story in the way that only VOA can do it. 12 services participated in the project in 12 different language, and we put together this series.
GVS: And when I say 12 services, it means like 12 big divisions in different parts of the world. This big, this VOA is vast
LC: All around the world
GVS: All around the world
LC: To discovered and every time that we went deep to find cases we discovered even more unexpected issues. For example, that this is not a problem from third world countries. Even in the United States, and developed countries, you found lot of cases, about these phenomenal.
GVS: Do they all have sort of the same origin, it is a cultural? Is it money? An economic or religious? I mean, or is there no common theme? We just have a lot of children child brides and out there.
LC: Yes, but it's mostly dragged by those issues that you mentioned, economic issues cultural issues, belief issues and improverty issues and lack of opportunities. One of the conclusions that we reached was that many of the girls regret being married for any reason, but the most that they regret was not being able to go back to school.
GVS: Now, there's a big difference between 16 which is still a child, and five. I mean it was it when I just picked that number of head. Is there a range of how young these child brides are?
LC: Well it depends on the culture too because we discovered that in some cultures, since they are all practically born, they are promised to an older man to sustain the future of the family. But in some places like in Latin America where I was part of the production. We found that mostly economic reasons, contribute to increase this phenomenon.
We found that very lucrative case in Mexico. It was in an isolated place and Muslim inhabited by indigenous people Chapa del Corso. We found that not only the bride, but the groom was underage. And this case was not caused because the parents obligate them to get married because of an undesired pregnancy. No, they you want to be married
GVS: Did you find any sort of now adult women who are child brides who see nothing wrong with this or don't see this as a violation of human rights so that for whatever reason they think that this is acceptable?
LC: Of course, and that is the pervasiveness of this phenomenon because it became normal for many cultures, they don't see anything wrong. And like for, for example in the Mexico case. We. Our correspondent because we work in close collaboration with our affiliates in Latin America but our correspondent interviewed the parents. And allow me to read what the father of the groom explained why he finally accepted this union and he said, If I keep them out, they might pick up a bad habit, some bias or drug addiction remember is Mexico and all over Latin America these problems are huge, and that would be my fault. What I have ended up doing is better supporting them as much as I possibly can.
GVS: Thank you its incredible work. Thank you.
(GRETA)
Mention child marriage and the first thing that comes to mind are young girls in developing countries, forced by their parents because of economic hardship or by cultural custom to marry an older man.
But young girls getting married happens more often, and in more parts of the world than many of us would like to believe...
(MARRIED TOO SOON)
American Ashley Duncan was barely out of middle school when she learned she was pregnant…
(English Ashley Duncan)
“And I was 15, Daniel was 18 and my family had believed that in the state of Missouri that if you are over 18 and have intercourse with anybody under 18 that it was statutory rape or something.”
(NARRATOR)
Rather than risk sending him to jail Ashley married her 18-year old boyfriend.
She’s 25 now, divorced and the single mother of four young boys.
But she is not alone. Three of Ashley’s cousins were also married before the age of 18 – Joining the 200-thousand minors in 41 US states who were married between the years 2000 to 2015.
But child marriage is far more common outside the United States.
About 650 million children and women alive today were married before the age of 18. That’s roughly 17 percent of the world’s female population.
In Africa, in Sub Saharan countries like Niger, Chad and Central African Republic, three of every four girls are married by the age of 18.
In Bangladesh – it’s 59 percent. Followed by Nepal at 40 percent.
In Afghanistan – more than 1/3 of all young girls are married by 18.
The same goes for Brazil…Nicaragua and Honduras…
and also in Laos - where 35 percent of girls are married by 18.
(Quentin Wodon, Economist World Bank)
“Most of the girls who marry before 18, do so because there’s a lack of viable alternatives.”
(NARRATOR)
The World Bank and the United Nations are working with various organizations around the globe to come up with better alternatives.
Their goal – to eradicate child marriage by the year 2030.
(GRETA)
More than 190 countries have adopted the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals of ending child marriage over the next ten years.
An ambitious goal for sure, but is it possible? Our next guest says it is.
Lyric Thompson is the Director of Policy & Advocacy at the International Center for Research on Women.
She is a member of a number of advocacy coalitions including “Girls Not Brides USA” and the Coalition to End Gender-Based Violence Globally
She has also over a decade of experience in global gender and development issues including women's economic empowerment.
Lyric Thompson joins us from Raleigh, North Carolina.
(Greta interviews Lyric Thompson)
GVS: Thank you for joining us.
LT: It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
GVS: This issue of child brides is so widespread worldwide. It's an ambitious goal to end it by 2030 number one is, you know, a cut off age, and how does this end, how do you how do you how do you convince people not to do this?
LT: Sure. Well the good news is it's ambitious, but it's achievable. I think I'm a fan of setting goals that we can achieve now, do we need to up our level of ambition to do that? I think so, but my organization has distinguished itself in testing solutions not only documenting the problem and you did a very great job of showing the global scope and impact of the practice, but also people want to know what they can do to help, and that's where we come in and we have done a global review of every program or policy that attempted to end child marriage. That was evaluated. So that's not the entire universe of efforts, but those that actually invested in saying, did it work? And we were able to distill from that review that there were five strategies that can end the practice. So I think the answer is yes we can end it, but we really got to get on. Get on the gun.
GVS: Where is the cut off though I mean there's some probably 17 year olds who might be watching right now been married for 10 or 15 years happily married, but then I assume that there's a bottom number and you know that mean, which I think most people would find appalling at a very young girl. Where does your organization sort of draw the line or how do you determine that?
LT: So, we ascribe to the internationally agreed age of majority which is from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which says the age of 18 is when you go from being a child to being an adult. I think what you're getting at is the bit of fluctuation that you see between countries that have different ages and then in the United States we have different ages by state. And so the cut off from our perspective is the age of 18. No exceptions because what you actually see in a lot of cases including our own and including my home state of North Carolina where I am today. You can see differences for girls and boys, where the girls age for marriage is actually lower. You can see exceptions for pregnancy as we heard in the story at the top of the segment. So, our opinion is age of 18, no exceptions, and that's what we're working towards by 2030.
GVS: What's the youngest you've seen in terms of child brides?
LT: Um in the United States, the youngest age of marriage was actually New Hampshire, which just changed its age of marriage, this year but that was 12. You can certainly as you heard earlier in the segment see countries where girls are promised from from girlhood and even infancy. So it really runs the gamut and does change slightly or geographic context.
GVS: I would imagine a sort of cultural hurdle to overcome that some people may believe that this is appropriate and be harder so explain that, you know why you might not want to have your child be engaged at a very young age, like for instance five.
LT: Certainly I think all cultures, including our own have a hard time with for instance, as you heard in the earlier story. The idea that an unmarried pregnant girl. That is, is was worse than being unmarried work by ICRW and others has actually shown that when you have the power dynamic of a girl, being married that's not actually protective in all cases you see increases of gender-based violence in the home increases in maternal and child health issues, which, including death. And, of course, as was mentioned by several of the folks we heard from earlier in the segment, very likely that she will not continue in school, which may be the biggest indicator of a life that is likely to be lived in poverty and servitude.
GVS: Thank you very much for joining us.
LT: My pleasure.
(GRETA)
As you have seen and heard, there are different reasons why some children marry.
Some face financial hardship, abuse and even abandonment.
This is the story of Mahi from Bangladesh.
Her story is different, because she blames, in part, herself for her husband's decision to leave.
(I Blame Myself)
My name is Mahi. When I was eleven years old my parents chose a man for me to marry.
But they didn't check if he was a good man or a bad man. They only asked a few people about him. They thought he had wealth.
As my parents and elders decided to arrange the marriage, I didn't know any details.
I begged my mother, "I want to continue my studies, I don't want to get married." I also told my sister and her husband the same thing. But they told me, "We are poor, at least you can get married now. If you continue to study, will you be able to get a good job? What will you be able to do with your life?"
So they said, "Get married, have a family, and live with your husband."
Even after telling everyone my objections, I still had to get married to this man. That's why I agreed to get married.
I saw my husband after the wedding. I never saw him before. Five or six months after our wedding, my husband said to me, "Mahi, I would like to start a tea stall."
"I need you to find me twenty thousand taka."
I thought, "He is my husband, how can I not trust him?"
I didn't realize that the tea stall wasn’t his real plan, which was to abandon me."
I signed for a loan of twenty thousand taka, with interest, for his business. After a few months, he sent me divorce papers. I had hoped he would come back. But he divorced me and married someone else.
What am I going to do with my life? Wherever I go, if it's the garment factory or somewhere else, the boss is going to say, "Will you have sex with me?"
Even when I'm walking on the street at night, rude boys will say, "Come with me, come with me, I'll give 100 or 200 taka." What can I do?”
If I apply for a job as a house maid, they send me away saying, "We can't hire a pretty young girl."
I am poor. Is it a crime to be born poor? We don't have a place. Anywhere.
Now I think, if I had only continued my studies, I would not have to experience
so much harassment from other people now. I could have found a good job.
I'm illiterate. Forget abut studying, my husband lied to me then left me. If I were educated my husband would not have left me.
If I could have had finished school, then I wouldn't have had to go through all of this.
Just because of my parents’ mistake, because I got married, this is why my life is like this.
So I'm going to tell everyone, "Parents, don't marry your daughters off at a young age, and ruin their lives."
Since my childhood, I've had a dream to be a lead actress in a play or movie.
Will my dream ever come true?
Will anyone help me realize my dream?
(GRETA)
The stories of anguish and despair are raw and heart wrenching.
But as some of our guests have suggested, there are solutions to fix this problem.
Kakenya Ntaiya has been there. She was engaged to be married at age 5.
Was engaged to be married but at the age of 11, she convinced her parents to call off the marriage.
Kakenya is now an activist.
After completing her education she founded “Kakenya's Dream” to educate girls and end traditional practices such as female genital mutilation and child marriage.
In 2009, the Kakenya Center for Excellence opened its doors.
And each year, reaches thousands of children and community members in rural Kenya.
(Greta interviews Kakenya Ntaiya)
GVS: Kakenya, thank you for joining us. Your story is extraordinary. And we all come to all these issues through our own eyes, obviously. I have no doubt your parents loved you, but they allowed, they wanted you to get engaged at age 5. How do they see this?
KN: um, where I come from, being married is the best thing that can happen to a woman or a girl. It’s what everybody wants, that's the ultimate prize. So my mother was very hard working so the neighbors saw that my mother was hard-working so I am going to be hard working for their son, so they booked me to be married to their son. And it was, you grow up knowing that's the ultimate. Your life has already been charted. You know where you're going to end up. But because I was the first of eight, I was helping my mother bring up my little sisters and I couldn't see myself being a wife at 12.
GVS: But that's so bold, I mean an 11 year old, you convinced your family that you wanted an education. And I mean what a bold thing to do for an 11 year old.
KN: Because I had tasted a bit of education, I went to school, and I wanted to become a teacher.
GVS: And so you've, you've now, you've developed this program and, which is, I mean, helping young girls, right? That wasn't an easy thing to do. I mean I've listened to some of your speeches, that was even a struggle to do.
KN: Well, I got an opportunity. And I think other speakers said that many girls don't have opportunities. So my mom helped me go back to school. I traded myself, of course FGM and early marriages are mostly linked, but I escaped and went to school. Staying in school was the most, the best thing that happened to me. I got mentored, I got a scholarship. I ended up at a university in America, and my whole world opened up. And that's where the turning point is, that, however much education I was getting my younger sisters and neighbors and kids in the villages were still getting married, and when we talk about numbers I know we've been putting 12 million girls getting married yearly. That’s 23 girls every minute. Those are real kids,
GVS: How many people in your village growing up, about?
KN: 10,000.
GVS: OK, and out of 10,000, how many girls besides yourself, didn't end up being a child bride? Were you able to quantify or say what percentage?
KN: What I can tell you when I started first grade there were many of us. My very first, best friend got married when we were in sixth grade. In eighth grade we were only two girls. Most of them had already gotten married.
GVS: One of the things that we read about the use of FGM female genital mutilation, you know, is that widely practiced?
KN: It is widely practiced.
GVS: And mothers, mothers understand this and mothers participate in this?
KN: It is a rite of passage to womanhood. And so, for you to be married, you have to go through a certain rite of passage. In my community it is female genital cutting, and that always, when that happens that girl gets married, she drops out of schools. She lives in a very difficult life, and the cycle continues.
GVS: And in your community back home, that's acceptable, culturally accepted?
KN: yeah, I mean, it's been practiced for years.
GVS: For years, and it’s widespread. But I’m saying, you know, when we started this conversation I said I look through, I look through things through my eyes, you know. And you know through my eyes, that's hurting somebody, you know.
KN: Child marriage is hurting children.
GVS: And child marriage is hurting people too. What has been the response to what you've done? I mean, have people embraced your, your program to get to, to educate girls and to work against child marriage?
KN: Absolutely. I think one of the things that we have been able to do is to show people what an educated girl looks like. I grew up in the community. I came back to the community I worked in the community I took my very first own girls in 2009. Right now those girls are in university and in colleges. We have worked with the parents. Our belief is that enter into a home through educating a girl. The rest is history. When you educate a girl in a family, she's going to impact the family life. And that's really what has been happening. The parents have come in, at first they were very skeptical, a woman, building a school for girls. But we've been able to show them and now the community is very supportive. All our guests are free from female genital cutting, they're free from getting married early, they're continuing and thriving and truly when you empower a girl, we do change the world.
GVS: You know it your story is such an extraordinary one. I first saw it on a TED talk, and I mean I wish we had a whole lot of time I mean, even I mean you know, even like trying to you know to get the men in the community to let you come to United States to study. You know, as I said I looked through things through my own eyes. I can’t imagine that, you know. It's extraordinary what you've done and that you've given back to your community.
KN: I think when you have given an opportunity you have, there’s this saying that, to whom much is given, much is expected.
GVS: But you embrace that I mean you did that I mean that's like, to whom a lot is, I mean you have done that.
KN: Because I have so many girls that I see every day, the ones you feature today in the stories, each one of them deserve and wants a better life. And if I can do a little something, I'm going to do that to make their life a better life.
GVS: That's extraordinary what you’ve done. I tip my hat to you. Thank you so much for joining us.
KN: Thank you, thank you.
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(Greta)
That's all the time we have for today.
Stay Plugged In by liking us on Facebook at Voice of America.
You can also like my Facebook page at facebook.com/Greta.
And follow me on Twitter at Greta.
Thanks for being Plugged In.
On Plugged In…
Married too soon.
Each year…
12 million girls…
children under the age of 18…
are denied their most basic rights..
forced to give up their education…
career opportunities …
and their innocence.
Not by choice…
but often…
because their culture says so.
We will hear from child brides…
and activists who have set the goal
of ending child marriages
by the year 2030.
when we look at the challenges…
and the cost of doing nothing…
On this week’s episode…
of Plugged In…
“The Worth of a Girl”
(Greta)
Hello and welcome to Plugged in.
I'm Greta Van Susteren.
12 million - is a staggering number and it is the estimated number of under-aged girls, children, who each year get married.
Some are forced, some do it out of obligation and some, out of desperation.
And the problem of child brides is not one confined to lower-income countries.
We are about to introduce you to four young women from different parts of the world. All of them, with one thing in common.
(4 Girls, 4 Countries)
Text:
Every child bride’s circumstances can differ. But the end result is often the same.
SOMAYA: Locator: Afghanistan
“My name is Somaya
I was studying in seventh grade. But 10 days before my final exam I was married.”
ORKIDA DRIZA: Locator: Albania
“My name is Orkida Driza, and I was married when I was 13½ years old.”
KATHLEEN BURNS: Locator: USA
“OK, um, Kathleen Burns. I live in Dyersburg, Tennessee.
I work all the time, take care of my baby and the husband. That's about it.”
MWANHAMISI: Locator: Tanzania
“One night, my mother told me, "Someone wants a domestic worker."
Later, mom told me someone had proposed to marry me.
She said the man was a good person and young, but I said ‘no.’ I cried.”
(text: “Pain, Regret & Obligation”)
SOMAYA:
“Anytime I said I wanted to go school, my in-laws and my husband would beat me and tell me, "You can't go to school."
My husband was young and immature, and his parents would encourage him to beat me and insult me.
But I never complained to my father or to anyone. I just lived with it.”
KATHLEEN BURNS:
“I got pregnant underage. And that was kind of what had us go ahead and get married, so I wouldn't send him to jail.
A lot of people look down on him for it and stuff. That's kind of why he didn't want to do this at first.
You know, but, like I told him, 'I don't care what anybody thinks.'
I love him, you know. It is what it is. I did not graduate.
I do regret, you know, not finishing school. Growing up way too fast.
You know, that's just stuff you shouldn't do when you're a kid, honestly. I see that all now. I didn't see it then, though. So, and you can't change it.”
ORKIDA DRIZA:
“One of my older sisters suffered from a grave kidney disease.
My mom decided to marry me off so my sister could have an operation, because the woman who wanted me to marry her son was on friendly terms with the doctors at the town hospital.
It was an obligation to my family and I did it to save my sister’s life.”
(text: “Taking a Stand”)
MWANHAMISI:
“I called the police, who asked for the groom's name and the marriage date. The night before the wedding a local official came to our house to ask whether I wanted to marry.
When I said no, he halted the ceremony.”
ORKIDA DRIZA:
“I call on all mothers: Even though we were married off while young, we should at least give a good education to our kids.”
(text: But decisions sometimes become patterns from one generation to the next.”)
ORKIDA DRIZA:
“When my oldest, Bleona, was 11 years old, someone from the Egyptian community came to ask to marry her. I had no other way. I thought, whatever God had in store for me, even sleeping in the streets, at least my daughter would have shelter.”
(Text: “While some may accept their situation, others take steps to rebuild.”)
KATHLEEN BURNS:
“It is hard, but other than that I don't really miss nothing, you know? I'm fine with how everything turned out with me.”
MWANHAMISI:
“I began to study textiles at a center. My dream is to become a great fashion designer.”
(text: And there are those left to grieve over a stolen youth.)
SOMAYA:
“I lost my childhood. I loved school and going to school. But they wouldn't let me.”
(GRETA)
Stolen childhoods.
And these young women, girls are just a few of the many we profiled in a recent series produced by Voice of America, titled “the Worth of a Girl.”
Lina Correa is with VOA's Latin American division and is one of the many VOA journalists who took part in this global production.
(Greta Van Susteren interviews Lina Correa)
GVS: Thank you for joining us.
LC: Thank you very much.
GVS: This is one of the reasons I love VOA. It does projects like this, what drew you to this project?
LC: Well, the first goal of this project was to bring awareness, to raise awareness of an issue that affect millions around the world, children, girls. Even their families, and it is not in the headlines. It is unbelievable that in the age of women empowerment. This issue is not in the headlines so that was the main goal, but it was the first time for VOA in many aspects. It was a unique opportunity to tell a story in the way that only VOA can do it. 12 services participated in the project in 12 different language, and we put together this series.
GVS: And when I say 12 services, it means like 12 big divisions in different parts of the world. This big, this VOA is vast
LC: All around the world
GVS: All around the world
LC: To discovered and every time that we went deep to find cases we discovered even more unexpected issues. For example, that this is not a problem from third world countries. Even in the United States, and developed countries, you found lot of cases, about these phenomenal.
GVS: Do they all have sort of the same origin, it is a cultural? Is it money? An economic or religious? I mean, or is there no common theme? We just have a lot of children child brides and out there.
LC: Yes, but it's mostly dragged by those issues that you mentioned, economic issues cultural issues, belief issues and improverty issues and lack of opportunities. One of the conclusions that we reached was that many of the girls regret being married for any reason, but the most that they regret was not being able to go back to school.
GVS: Now, there's a big difference between 16 which is still a child, and five. I mean it was it when I just picked that number of head. Is there a range of how young these child brides are?
LC: Well it depends on the culture too because we discovered that in some cultures, since they are all practically born, they are promised to an older man to sustain the future of the family. But in some places like in Latin America where I was part of the production. We found that mostly economic reasons, contribute to increase this phenomenon.
We found that very lucrative case in Mexico. It was in an isolated place and Muslim inhabited by indigenous people Chapa del Corso. We found that not only the bride, but the groom was underage. And this case was not caused because the parents obligate them to get married because of an undesired pregnancy. No, they you want to be married
GVS: Did you find any sort of now adult women who are child brides who see nothing wrong with this or don't see this as a violation of human rights so that for whatever reason they think that this is acceptable?
LC: Of course, and that is the pervasiveness of this phenomenon because it became normal for many cultures, they don't see anything wrong. And like for, for example in the Mexico case. We. Our correspondent because we work in close collaboration with our affiliates in Latin America but our correspondent interviewed the parents. And allow me to read what the father of the groom explained why he finally accepted this union and he said, If I keep them out, they might pick up a bad habit, some bias or drug addiction remember is Mexico and all over Latin America these problems are huge, and that would be my fault. What I have ended up doing is better supporting them as much as I possibly can.
GVS: Thank you its incredible work. Thank you.
(GRETA)
Mention child marriage and the first thing that comes to mind are young girls in developing countries, forced by their parents because of economic hardship or by cultural custom to marry an older man.
But young girls getting married happens more often, and in more parts of the world than many of us would like to believe...
(MARRIED TOO SOON)
American Ashley Duncan was barely out of middle school when she learned she was pregnant…
(English Ashley Duncan)
“And I was 15, Daniel was 18 and my family had believed that in the state of Missouri that if you are over 18 and have intercourse with anybody under 18 that it was statutory rape or something.”
(NARRATOR)
Rather than risk sending him to jail Ashley married her 18-year old boyfriend.
She’s 25 now, divorced and the single mother of four young boys.
But she is not alone. Three of Ashley’s cousins were also married before the age of 18 – Joining the 200-thousand minors in 41 US states who were married between the years 2000 to 2015.
But child marriage is far more common outside the United States.
About 650 million children and women alive today were married before the age of 18. That’s roughly 17 percent of the world’s female population.
In Africa, in Sub Saharan countries like Niger, Chad and Central African Republic, three of every four girls are married by the age of 18.
In Bangladesh – it’s 59 percent. Followed by Nepal at 40 percent.
In Afghanistan – more than 1/3 of all young girls are married by 18.
The same goes for Brazil…Nicaragua and Honduras…
and also in Laos - where 35 percent of girls are married by 18.
(Quentin Wodon, Economist World Bank)
“Most of the girls who marry before 18, do so because there’s a lack of viable alternatives.”
(NARRATOR)
The World Bank and the United Nations are working with various organizations around the globe to come up with better alternatives.
Their goal – to eradicate child marriage by the year 2030.
(GRETA)
More than 190 countries have adopted the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals of ending child marriage over the next ten years.
An ambitious goal for sure, but is it possible? Our next guest says it is.
Lyric Thompson is the Director of Policy & Advocacy at the International Center for Research on Women.
She is a member of a number of advocacy coalitions including “Girls Not Brides USA” and the Coalition to End Gender-Based Violence Globally
She has also over a decade of experience in global gender and development issues including women's economic empowerment.
Lyric Thompson joins us from Raleigh, North Carolina.
(Greta interviews Lyric Thompson)
GVS: Thank you for joining us.
LT: It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
GVS: This issue of child brides is so widespread worldwide. It's an ambitious goal to end it by 2030 number one is, you know, a cut off age, and how does this end, how do you how do you how do you convince people not to do this?
LT: Sure. Well the good news is it's ambitious, but it's achievable. I think I'm a fan of setting goals that we can achieve now, do we need to up our level of ambition to do that? I think so, but my organization has distinguished itself in testing solutions not only documenting the problem and you did a very great job of showing the global scope and impact of the practice, but also people want to know what they can do to help, and that's where we come in and we have done a global review of every program or policy that attempted to end child marriage. That was evaluated. So that's not the entire universe of efforts, but those that actually invested in saying, did it work? And we were able to distill from that review that there were five strategies that can end the practice. So I think the answer is yes we can end it, but we really got to get on. Get on the gun.
GVS: Where is the cut off though I mean there's some probably 17 year olds who might be watching right now been married for 10 or 15 years happily married, but then I assume that there's a bottom number and you know that mean, which I think most people would find appalling at a very young girl. Where does your organization sort of draw the line or how do you determine that?
LT: So, we ascribe to the internationally agreed age of majority which is from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which says the age of 18 is when you go from being a child to being an adult. I think what you're getting at is the bit of fluctuation that you see between countries that have different ages and then in the United States we have different ages by state. And so the cut off from our perspective is the age of 18. No exceptions because what you actually see in a lot of cases including our own and including my home state of North Carolina where I am today. You can see differences for girls and boys, where the girls age for marriage is actually lower. You can see exceptions for pregnancy as we heard in the story at the top of the segment. So, our opinion is age of 18, no exceptions, and that's what we're working towards by 2030.
GVS: What's the youngest you've seen in terms of child brides?
LT: Um in the United States, the youngest age of marriage was actually New Hampshire, which just changed its age of marriage, this year but that was 12. You can certainly as you heard earlier in the segment see countries where girls are promised from from girlhood and even infancy. So it really runs the gamut and does change slightly or geographic context.
GVS: I would imagine a sort of cultural hurdle to overcome that some people may believe that this is appropriate and be harder so explain that, you know why you might not want to have your child be engaged at a very young age, like for instance five.
LT: Certainly I think all cultures, including our own have a hard time with for instance, as you heard in the earlier story. The idea that an unmarried pregnant girl. That is, is was worse than being unmarried work by ICRW and others has actually shown that when you have the power dynamic of a girl, being married that's not actually protective in all cases you see increases of gender-based violence in the home increases in maternal and child health issues, which, including death. And, of course, as was mentioned by several of the folks we heard from earlier in the segment, very likely that she will not continue in school, which may be the biggest indicator of a life that is likely to be lived in poverty and servitude.
GVS: Thank you very much for joining us.
LT: My pleasure.
(GRETA)
As you have seen and heard, there are different reasons why some children marry.
Some face financial hardship, abuse and even abandonment.
This is the story of Mahi from Bangladesh.
Her story is different, because she blames, in part, herself for her husband's decision to leave.
(I Blame Myself)
My name is Mahi. When I was eleven years old my parents chose a man for me to marry.
But they didn't check if he was a good man or a bad man. They only asked a few people about him. They thought he had wealth.
As my parents and elders decided to arrange the marriage, I didn't know any details.
I begged my mother, "I want to continue my studies, I don't want to get married." I also told my sister and her husband the same thing. But they told me, "We are poor, at least you can get married now. If you continue to study, will you be able to get a good job? What will you be able to do with your life?"
So they said, "Get married, have a family, and live with your husband."
Even after telling everyone my objections, I still had to get married to this man. That's why I agreed to get married.
I saw my husband after the wedding. I never saw him before. Five or six months after our wedding, my husband said to me, "Mahi, I would like to start a tea stall."
"I need you to find me twenty thousand taka."
I thought, "He is my husband, how can I not trust him?"
I didn't realize that the tea stall wasn’t his real plan, which was to abandon me."
I signed for a loan of twenty thousand taka, with interest, for his business. After a few months, he sent me divorce papers. I had hoped he would come back. But he divorced me and married someone else.
What am I going to do with my life? Wherever I go, if it's the garment factory or somewhere else, the boss is going to say, "Will you have sex with me?"
Even when I'm walking on the street at night, rude boys will say, "Come with me, come with me, I'll give 100 or 200 taka." What can I do?”
If I apply for a job as a house maid, they send me away saying, "We can't hire a pretty young girl."
I am poor. Is it a crime to be born poor? We don't have a place. Anywhere.
Now I think, if I had only continued my studies, I would not have to experience
so much harassment from other people now. I could have found a good job.
I'm illiterate. Forget abut studying, my husband lied to me then left me. If I were educated my husband would not have left me.
If I could have had finished school, then I wouldn't have had to go through all of this.
Just because of my parents’ mistake, because I got married, this is why my life is like this.
So I'm going to tell everyone, "Parents, don't marry your daughters off at a young age, and ruin their lives."
Since my childhood, I've had a dream to be a lead actress in a play or movie.
Will my dream ever come true?
Will anyone help me realize my dream?
(GRETA)
The stories of anguish and despair are raw and heart wrenching.
But as some of our guests have suggested, there are solutions to fix this problem.
Kakenya Ntaiya has been there. She was engaged to be married at age 5.
Was engaged to be married but at the age of 11, she convinced her parents to call off the marriage.
Kakenya is now an activist.
After completing her education she founded “Kakenya's Dream” to educate girls and end traditional practices such as female genital mutilation and child marriage.
In 2009, the Kakenya Center for Excellence opened its doors.
And each year, reaches thousands of children and community members in rural Kenya.
(Greta interviews Kakenya Ntaiya)
GVS: Kakenya, thank you for joining us. Your story is extraordinary. And we all come to all these issues through our own eyes, obviously. I have no doubt your parents loved you, but they allowed, they wanted you to get engaged at age 5. How do they see this?
KN: um, where I come from, being married is the best thing that can happen to a woman or a girl. It’s what everybody wants, that's the ultimate prize. So my mother was very hard working so the neighbors saw that my mother was hard-working so I am going to be hard working for their son, so they booked me to be married to their son. And it was, you grow up knowing that's the ultimate. Your life has already been charted. You know where you're going to end up. But because I was the first of eight, I was helping my mother bring up my little sisters and I couldn't see myself being a wife at 12.
GVS: But that's so bold, I mean an 11 year old, you convinced your family that you wanted an education. And I mean what a bold thing to do for an 11 year old.
KN: Because I had tasted a bit of education, I went to school, and I wanted to become a teacher.
GVS: And so you've, you've now, you've developed this program and, which is, I mean, helping young girls, right? That wasn't an easy thing to do. I mean I've listened to some of your speeches, that was even a struggle to do.
KN: Well, I got an opportunity. And I think other speakers said that many girls don't have opportunities. So my mom helped me go back to school. I traded myself, of course FGM and early marriages are mostly linked, but I escaped and went to school. Staying in school was the most, the best thing that happened to me. I got mentored, I got a scholarship. I ended up at a university in America, and my whole world opened up. And that's where the turning point is, that, however much education I was getting my younger sisters and neighbors and kids in the villages were still getting married, and when we talk about numbers I know we've been putting 12 million girls getting married yearly. That’s 23 girls every minute. Those are real kids,
GVS: How many people in your village growing up, about?
KN: 10,000.
GVS: OK, and out of 10,000, how many girls besides yourself, didn't end up being a child bride? Were you able to quantify or say what percentage?
KN: What I can tell you when I started first grade there were many of us. My very first, best friend got married when we were in sixth grade. In eighth grade we were only two girls. Most of them had already gotten married.
GVS: One of the things that we read about the use of FGM female genital mutilation, you know, is that widely practiced?
KN: It is widely practiced.
GVS: And mothers, mothers understand this and mothers participate in this?
KN: It is a rite of passage to womanhood. And so, for you to be married, you have to go through a certain rite of passage. In my community it is female genital cutting, and that always, when that happens that girl gets married, she drops out of schools. She lives in a very difficult life, and the cycle continues.
GVS: And in your community back home, that's acceptable, culturally accepted?
KN: yeah, I mean, it's been practiced for years.
GVS: For years, and it’s widespread. But I’m saying, you know, when we started this conversation I said I look through, I look through things through my eyes, you know. And you know through my eyes, that's hurting somebody, you know.
KN: Child marriage is hurting children.
GVS: And child marriage is hurting people too. What has been the response to what you've done? I mean, have people embraced your, your program to get to, to educate girls and to work against child marriage?
KN: Absolutely. I think one of the things that we have been able to do is to show people what an educated girl looks like. I grew up in the community. I came back to the community I worked in the community I took my very first own girls in 2009. Right now those girls are in university and in colleges. We have worked with the parents. Our belief is that enter into a home through educating a girl. The rest is history. When you educate a girl in a family, she's going to impact the family life. And that's really what has been happening. The parents have come in, at first they were very skeptical, a woman, building a school for girls. But we've been able to show them and now the community is very supportive. All our guests are free from female genital cutting, they're free from getting married early, they're continuing and thriving and truly when you empower a girl, we do change the world.
GVS: You know it your story is such an extraordinary one. I first saw it on a TED talk, and I mean I wish we had a whole lot of time I mean, even I mean you know, even like trying to you know to get the men in the community to let you come to United States to study. You know, as I said I looked through things through my own eyes. I can’t imagine that, you know. It's extraordinary what you've done and that you've given back to your community.
KN: I think when you have given an opportunity you have, there’s this saying that, to whom much is given, much is expected.
GVS: But you embrace that I mean you did that I mean that's like, to whom a lot is, I mean you have done that.
KN: Because I have so many girls that I see every day, the ones you feature today in the stories, each one of them deserve and wants a better life. And if I can do a little something, I'm going to do that to make their life a better life.
GVS: That's extraordinary what you’ve done. I tip my hat to you. Thank you so much for joining us.
KN: Thank you, thank you.
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(Greta)
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