If all this fighting wasn't going on with people being made refugees, these young girls would be safely back in Syria and starting the new term at school instead of being forced into marriage at such a young age.
In Jordan, Ever Younger Syrian Brides
World | Rana F. Sweis, The New York Times | Updated: September 14, 2014 08:08 IST
Rahaf Yousef, 13, a Syrian refugee. (Lynsey Addario/The New York Times)
MAFRAQ: The bride-to-be was so young and shy, she spent her engagement party cloaked in a hooded robe that swallowed her slim figure but could not quite hide the ruffled pink dress her fiance's family had rented for her.
As the Syrian women celebrating her coming wedding to an 18-year-old cousin chattered around her in the Zaatari refugee camp, she squirreled herself in a corner, perking up only when a photo or message from a friend popped up on her cellphone. The girl, Rahaf Yousef, is 13.
Speaking wistfully of her days at school, she declared herself throughout the day to be "indifferent" to the marriage she says will keep her from finishing her education. But no one seemed to be listening.
For many Syrians stuck in Jordan's squalid and sometimes dangerous refugee camps, marrying girls off at younger and younger ages is increasingly being seen as a necessity - a way of easing the financial burden on families with little or no income and allaying fears of rape and sexual harassment in makeshift living spaces where it is harder to enforce the rule of law. As a result, UNICEF says, the number of marriages involving girls younger than 18 has ballooned since the war in Syria started.
"The parents feel a man can protect" their daughters, said Ola Tebawi, an official at Jordan Health Aid Society, a nonprofit that provides primary health care for refugees with United Nations support. "These families feel marriage would be the best option for a girl growing up as a refugee."
But the trend - even among displaced Syrians who live outside the camps - is increasingly worrying international aid groups and women's advocates who say that the Syrians are simply trading immediate dangers for longer-term ones. They tick off a laundry list of threats for women worldwide that accompany marrying before they are 18.
High on the list, they say, are increased risks of being the victims of domestic violence and an abrupt end to the young women's education. The aid workers also worry about pregnancies among girls whose age makes them more vulnerable to certain life-threatening complications like eclampsia, which is characterized by seizures.
During the first six months of this year, 32 percent of all registered marriages of Syrian refugees in Jordan involved a girl under the age of 18, according to the Jordanian government. That percentage was up from 25 percent during all of 2013 and, according to UNICEF, more than twice as high as the 13 percent of marriages in Syria just before the war that included girls younger than 18.
A majority of the Syrian girls marry into Jordanian families, UNICEF reported, ensuring themselves a place in Jordan outside the refugee camps, and a new home country for the long term.
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In Jordan Ever Younger Syrian Brides
In Jordan, Ever Younger Syrian Brides
World | Rana F. Sweis, The New York Times | Updated: September 14, 2014 08:08 IST
Rahaf Yousef, 13, a Syrian refugee. (Lynsey Addario/The New York Times)
MAFRAQ: The bride-to-be was so young and shy, she spent her engagement party cloaked in a hooded robe that swallowed her slim figure but could not quite hide the ruffled pink dress her fiance's family had rented for her.
As the Syrian women celebrating her coming wedding to an 18-year-old cousin chattered around her in the Zaatari refugee camp, she squirreled herself in a corner, perking up only when a photo or message from a friend popped up on her cellphone. The girl, Rahaf Yousef, is 13.
Speaking wistfully of her days at school, she declared herself throughout the day to be "indifferent" to the marriage she says will keep her from finishing her education. But no one seemed to be listening.
For many Syrians stuck in Jordan's squalid and sometimes dangerous refugee camps, marrying girls off at younger and younger ages is increasingly being seen as a necessity - a way of easing the financial burden on families with little or no income and allaying fears of rape and sexual harassment in makeshift living spaces where it is harder to enforce the rule of law. As a result, UNICEF says, the number of marriages involving girls younger than 18 has ballooned since the war in Syria started.
"The parents feel a man can protect" their daughters, said Ola Tebawi, an official at Jordan Health Aid Society, a nonprofit that provides primary health care for refugees with United Nations support. "These families feel marriage would be the best option for a girl growing up as a refugee."
But the trend - even among displaced Syrians who live outside the camps - is increasingly worrying international aid groups and women's advocates who say that the Syrians are simply trading immediate dangers for longer-term ones. They tick off a laundry list of threats for women worldwide that accompany marrying before they are 18.
High on the list, they say, are increased risks of being the victims of domestic violence and an abrupt end to the young women's education. The aid workers also worry about pregnancies among girls whose age makes them more vulnerable to certain life-threatening complications like eclampsia, which is characterized by seizures.
During the first six months of this year, 32 percent of all registered marriages of Syrian refugees in Jordan involved a girl under the age of 18, according to the Jordanian government. That percentage was up from 25 percent during all of 2013 and, according to UNICEF, more than twice as high as the 13 percent of marriages in Syria just before the war that included girls younger than 18.
A majority of the Syrian girls marry into Jordanian families, UNICEF reported, ensuring themselves a place in Jordan outside the refugee camps, and a new home country for the long term.
Continue reading at:
In Jordan Ever Younger Syrian Brides
