Corona Daily 160: Girls not Brides

There is no joy in reading the UNICEF report published this morning to coincide with International Women’s Day. The report describes the huge threat posed by Covid-19 to wipe out the progress made in fighting girl child marriage.

Worldwide, 650 million girls and women are married while underage. The UN definition includes both formal and informal child marriages. In many countries, underage marriages are illegal, but they still happen without being registered. An unregistered marriage of a minor girl equally damages her life. Each year, about 12 million minor girls get married. These five leading countries account for more than half of them: India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Brazil.

Worldwide efforts on several fronts had reduced the numbers by some 15%. In the last decade, an estimated 25 million girls were saved from premature marriages. A single year of the pandemic has changed all that. Now it is feared we will see an additional 10 million child brides in the next ten years.

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An underage girl thrust into a marriage is robbed of her childhood. Her education stops. She starts living in a family of strangers. Traditional families expect her not to work outside the home. There is family pressure and societal expectation for her to get pregnant. She is neither physically nor mentally mature. In developing countries, many young girls die of pregnancy complications or during childbirth. If she survives the childbirth, housework and children become her function in life. This allows patriarchal societies to perpetuate the gender imbalance and remain backward.

The same girl, by postponing marriage for another ten years, can graduate, become employable for a decent job, be financially and psychologically independent, and able to control her life and maternity better.

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Covid-19 has shaken the life of a child girl more than we can imagine.

School closures are perhaps the biggest factor. In many developing countries, schools provided meals and security. Maharashtra, the Indian state I live in, provides free education to girls until 18 years of age. Uninterrupted education is a major tool for women empowerment. Some schools also provide sanitary products. Their supply became unreliable during the pandemic. Even in richer countries like Australia and Ireland, women reported price rises and shortages.

Economic shocks have contributed. Poor people have lost jobs, and must feed children who would have received meals at schools. For these families, education and marriage compete, rather than complement. It is convenient to give off the daughter and reduce the burden. With girls not going to school, the risk of sexual violence is high. S0me parents arrange a daughter’s marriage in the belief it will protect her from violence from other men in the community. In countries like India, where weddings are expensive, dowry is prevalent, parents are taking advantage of lockdowns to arrange an economical wedding and avail dowry discounts. In the marriage market, the younger the bride, the lesser the dowry.

Support services are interrupted. Several helplines and support centers normally exist to prevent child marriages, to counsel the girls about contraception and pregnancy, to dissuade parents from giving away their minor daughter, offer financial support. In the lockdown, many such services were inaccessible. Schools were often a good mediating point. Contraception supplies became erratic. Unwanted teen pregnancies sometimes translated into unwanted marriages.

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India has done good work in the last few decades in terms of incentivizing parents who keep their daughters in education, starting helplines for girls, running awareness campaigns. In many families, tradition is still stronger than the law. Every year 1.5 million underage Indian girls are thrown into a marriage. In the pandemic, reports say there are instances of 12/13-year-old girls marrying.

India and all developing countries in Asia and Africa should focus on reopening schools. Immediately. They have been shut for nearly a year now. The virus damage as a result of schools reopening can’t be worse than a child marriage. Because nothing can be worse than a child bride.

Ravi