Number of 15-year-old brides increasing world wide

[bobbymcgill]

-The humanitarian group World Vision reported that the number of girls in poor countries who marry before the age of 18 will double to 100 million in the next decade. The survey estimated that 3,500 girls worldwide marry before the age of 15. Bangladesh topped the list with 53% of new brides getting married before they can drive.

The report went on to offer sage advice to girls who marry too young saying, “Move to America, you never know, your mother might be nominated to the Republican presidential ticket.”

From Idle Wordship, "The Week We View"

 

[waltky]

Brave young lady - no laughin' matter...

Yemeni Girl Escapes Early Marriage, Raises Awareness
July 25, 2013 > Nada al-Ahdal, 11, says in YouTube video that she ran away from home to escape forced marriage, money main motive behind her parents' intentions

Nada al-Ahdal, the 11-year-old Yemeni girl who says in a viral YouTube video that she ran away from home to escape a forced marriage, told Radio Sawa that money is the main motive behind her parents' intentions. In the interview, she talked about the details of her ordeal. “I thought a lot about escaping my parent’s house during the night, so at six a.m. I ran away by myself and I was not afraid,” she said, and added that she is now under the protection of Yemeni Women Union, a nonprofit that empowers women and promotes their rights. Nada has succeeded in attracting worldwide attention through her video in which she says “I would rather die than get married.”

She also asks in the three-minute clip, “What happened to childhood innocence? What have the children done wrong to get married off like that?” Ahdal’s uncle, Abdul Salam al-Ahdal, told Radio Sawa his niece refuses to return to her parents because of their determination to marry her off. He said attempts to persuade her parents to change their decision, especially the argument that she is too young to get married, have not succeeded despite the intervention of officials and humanitarian organizations. He added that “radical Islamic parties” have threatened him and Nada because they want her and the whole case “to disappear” unless she submits to her parents’ will.

Nada al-Ahdal, an 11-year-old Yemeni girl, who escaped an early, arranged marriage, is raising awareness about children and forced marriage.

Nada Ahdal told Radio Sawa she is not planning to go back to her parents, whom she has not forgiven. She said she will solve her problem on her own, though she is not sure how. She said that her parents want her to marry a 22-year-old for financial purposes, the fundamental reason behind child forced marriage in Yemen. “After I solve my own problem, I will try to help any other young girl going through the same situation as mine,” she said.

Her uncle said Nada, who had been living at his house since she was two years old, fled her parents’ house just two weeks after going back to visit them. “I did not have an idea that her parents were planning for this marriage,” he said. According to a Human Rights Watch report, widespread child marriage jeopardizes Yemeni girls’ access to education, harms their health and keeps them as second-class citizens. The report also says there is no legal minimum age for girls to marry in Yemen and that many of them are forced into marriage as young as 8.

Yemeni Girl Escapes Early Marriage, Raises Awareness

 

[waltky]

A step backward for womens' rights...

Iraqi bill to legalize child marriage criticized
14 Mar.`14 — A contentious draft law being considered in Iraq could open the door to girls as young as nine getting married and would require wives to submit to sex on their husband's whim, provoking outrage from rights activists and many Iraqis who see it as a step backward for women's rights.

The measure, aimed at creating different laws for Iraq's majority Shiite population, could further fray the country's divisions amid some of the worst bloodshed since the sectarian fighting that nearly ripped the country apart after the U.S.-led invasion. It also comes as more and more children under 18 get married in the country. "That law represents a crime against humanity and childhood," prominent Iraqi human rights activist Hana Adwar told The Associated Press. "Married underage girls are subjected to physical and psychological suffering. Iraqi law now sets the legal age for marriage at 18 without parental approval. Girls as young as 15 can be married only with a guardian's approval.

The proposed new measure, known as the Jaafari Personal Status Law, is based on the principles of a Shiite school of religious law founded by Jaafar al-Sadiq, the sixth Shiite imam. Iraq's Justice Ministry late last year introduced the draft measure to the Cabinet, which approved it last month despite strong opposition by rights groups and activists. The draft law does not set a minimum age for marriage. Instead, it mentions an age in a section on divorce, setting rules for divorces of girls who have reached the age of 9 years in the lunar Islamic calendar. It also says that's the age girls reach puberty. Since the Islamic calendar year is 10 or 11 days shorter than the Gregorian calendar, that would be the equivalent of 8 years and 8 months old. The bill makes the father the only parent with the right to accept or refuse the marriage proposal.

Critics of the bill believe that its authors slipped the age into the divorce section as a backhanded way to allow marriages of girls that young. Already, government statistics show that nearly 25 percent of marriages in Iraq involved someone under the age of 18 in 2011, up from 21 percent in 2001 and 15 percent in 1997. Planning Ministry spokesman Abdul-Zahra Hendawi said the practice of underage marriage is particularly prevalent in rural areas and some provinces where illiteracy is high. Also under the proposed measure, a husband can have sex with his wife regardless of her consent. The bill also prevents women from leaving the house without their husband's permission, would restrict women's rights in matters of parental custody after divorce and make it easier for men to take multiple wives.

Parliament must still ratify the bill before it becomes law. That is unlikely to happen before parliamentary elections scheduled for April 30, though the Cabinet support suggests it remains a priority for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's administration. Al-Maliki is widely expected to seek a third term. Baghdad-based analyst Hadi Jalo suggested that election campaigning might be behind the proposal. "Some influential Shiite politicians have the impression that they should do their best to make any achievement that would end the injustice that had been done against the Shiites in the past," Jalo said.

MORE

 

[waltky]

The plight of child brides in Niger...

Forced marriages, too many babies quash hope for Niger's girls
Nov 4, 2015: Fifteen-year-old Ousseina's dream of becoming a nurse is already over. "For me, school's finished," said the frail teenager who sells eggs by a roadstop in the southern Niger town of Maradi.

She, like so many other girls in this deeply poor west African state bordering the Sahara, has no choice but to wed very early. "My marriage?" she said, her little body shrouded in a sky-blue veil. "It will be after the harvest towards the end of November" -- seven months before she would have passed her school certificate, the key to further education and, with luck, a nursing career. The lot of women in Niger is among the worst, if not the worst, in the world thanks largely to a relentless tradition of early marriage, big families and having pregnancies in quick succession -- fervently endorsed by the influential Muslim majority.

Even efforts by the United Nations and rights groups to point out the ravages -- notably the damaged bodies of girls not ready to bear babies -- have met with fierce resistance. Some clerics have condemned initiatives to hold off wedlock and promote contraception as "the devil's work brought by the West". Last year, several Muslim organisations even threatened to "block the path" of anyone who "tries to challenge marriages celebrated in our towns and villages" that are "considered by feminists as 'too early'."

'Against their will'

Even among the general populace reasons abound to ignore the "required" minimum age of 18 before a girl is wed. School is a frequent excuse -- notably if the girl is not doing well in class. "Send your daughter to school and she's likely to come back with a baby instead of a diploma!" scoffed a Maradi moto-taxi driver named Balla Issa. Such thinking has stymied education -- and chances -- for Niger's women. According to UN figures, only four out of every 10 girls are enrolled in primary school and two out of 10 carry on to middle school. The percentage drops radically for high school -- only three out of 100 girls make it that far. "Girls are married as young as 15 and at times to much older men, against their will," deplored Mintou Moctar, a midwife in Safo, a village south of Maradi.

UN statistics on forced or arranged marriages are alarming: 30 percent of girls are married before 15 and 75 percent before 18, according to the UNICEF office in the capital Niamey. A separate, recent government enquiry found the same results. Economic reasons are also used to justify the custom in a nation prone to drought, food shortages and malnutrition and where 60 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, notably in the vast rural zones. Giving girls in marriage means one less mouth to feed. "Boys migrate, but girls are more vulnerable and risk getting mixed up in prostitution," argued farmer Malam Ada, who has already married off two of his minor daughters.

'Delusional'

 

[Delta4Embassy]

Gee you all are against 'traditional marriage?' Young women have always been married off about this age, it's normal, traditional and totally religious.

By the by, can get married here in MIssouri at 15 with parental consent as with an arranged marriage. So maybe instead of shining the spotlight on Muslim countries we outta take a look in the fucking mirror!

"Issuance of license prohibited, when--parental consent, when required.

451.090. 1. No recorder shall, in any event except as herein provided, issue a license authorizing the marriage of any person under fifteen years of age; provided, however, that such license may be issued on order of a circuit or associate circuit judge of the county in which the license is applied for, such license being issued only for good cause shown and by reason of such unusual conditions as to make such marriage advisable.

2. No recorder shall issue a license authorizing the marriage of any male under the age of eighteen years or of any female under the age of eighteen years, except with the consent of his or her custodial parent or guardian, which consent shall be given at the time, in writing, stating the residence of the person giving such consent, signed and sworn to before an officer authorized to administer oaths.

3. The recorder shall state in every license whether the parties applying for same, one or either or both of them, are of age, or whether the male is under the age of eighteen years or the female under the age of eighteen years, and if the male is under the age of eighteen years or the female is under the age of eighteen years, the name of the custodial parent or guardian consenting to such marriage. "
Section: 451.0090 Issuance of license prohibited, when--parental consent, when required. RSMO 451.090

 

[waltky]

Africa's Child Brides Expected To Double By 2050...

African Union Pledges to Stop Child Marriage
November 26, 2015 — Confidence was just 14 when her aunt married her off to a 42-year-old man who already had a wife.

The now 22-year-old Zimbabwean says the experience shattered her. Her husband was abusive, as were his other wives. “After two years of marriage, life was so difficult for me that I tried to kill myself by drinking rat poison,” she told Human Rights Watch researchers. The rights watchdog, in highlighting the issue, released several girls’ accounts but omitted their last names. "Child marriage ruined my life,” Confidence said. “Now I do not work and cannot find a job because I stopped going to school.”

Ending child marriage

It’s stories like this -- all too common -- that have prompted the African Union to convene a summit in Zambia this week with a view to ending child marriage. The assembly will pledge to set and enforce 18 as the minimum legal age for marriage across the continent. The gathering accompanies a new report by UNICEF that reveals a shocking statistic -- if current trends hold and Africa’s population continues to grow at its expected rate, the number of child brides in Africa will more than double in the next 35 years, to 310 million married girls. Unless things change, by 2050 almost half of the world’s child brides will be on the African continent. The majority of Africa’s child brides -- some 23 million of them -- are in Nigeria, the continent’s most populous nation, which has a minimum marriage age of 18.

Minimum marriage age

Marriage before the age of 18 is actually already against the law in most African countries -- though like many U.S. states, some countries allow teenagers to marry with parental consent, according to data compiled by the The African Child Policy Forum. But that hasn’t stopped more 125 million girls from being robbed of their childhood by being married below that age in traditional or customary unions. Most of the children affected are girls, statistics show. Child grooms exist, but are rare.

A woman protests against underage marriages in Lagos, Nigeria, July 20, 2013. The African Union is to convene a summit in Zambia this week with a view to ending child marriage.​

AU chairwoman Nkosozana Dlamini Zuma said cultural norms that undervalue girls and women are largely to blame. “Child marriage generates norms that have become increasingly difficult to exterminate – norms that undermine the value of our women,” Zuma said. “Through greater awareness, teamed with a collaborative approach, the crippling effects of child marriage can be eradicated.” Experts say poverty and lack of educational options also contribute to the incidence of child marriage.

Child marriage dangers

 

[Mr. H.]

Much as I'd like to leave Mrs. H. for a 15-18 year old, it ain't gonna happen.

My final realization occurred to me just today, as I ordered the liver and onions from the senior menu.

My dick done it's job long ago. Four kids and a grandchild (and another on the way).

Life isn't exactly good, but it's fine by me.