Photos to cry for.

The Daily Mail reports

The terrifying world of child brides: Devastating images show girls young enough to be in pre-school who are married off to older men    

By SNEJANA FARBEROV

PUBLISHED: 03:59 GMT, 12 October 2012 | UPDATED: 13:45 GMT, 12 October 2012

At age 11, Ghulam was married off to 40-year-old Jaiz in a rural Afghan village, making her only one of more than 10 million young girls who are being forced to wed men old enough to be their fathers or grandfather every year.

Disturbing: Faiz, 40 (left), and Ghulam (right), 11, sit in her home prior to their wedding in the rural Damarda Village, Afghanistan on September 11, 2005

In an effort to start a global conversation about the devastating effects of early marriages, which are currently practiced in more than 50 developing countries, the United Nations designated October 11 as International Day of the Girl Child this year.

Day of the Child Bride would have been better I am guessing that the reason was to broaden the issues that need highlighting but this issue is important enough to allow it to stand on its own.

To mark the occasion and draw attention to the problem of child brides, photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair teamed up with National Geographic to create  a series of heart-breaking photos depicting girls as young as five years old being married off to middle-aged men in countries like India, Yemen and Ethiopia.

Minors: Tahani (front), 8, is seen with her husband Majed, 27, and her former classmate Ghada (rear), 8, and her husband outside their home in Hajjah, Yemen

Although child marriage is against the law in many countries, and international treaties forbid the practice, it is estimates that about 51 million girls below age 18 are currently married, often under the cover of darkness and in secret. In Afghanistan alone, it is believed that approximately 57 per cent of girls wed before the legal age of 16.

The idea that people can be seen as property is something that should rightly enrage us all. What is worse is that the perpertrators are the families of these children. 

Various factors drive parents of child brides to marry off their daughters, from the community’s pressure to confirm to age-old cultural customs to economic considerations. In poor, developing nations, it is not uncommon for families to settle debts by offering their daughters as payment. 

I don't buy into the culture argument, it is bullshit the worst occurence of the practice seems to be Afghanistan at an estimated 57% that tells us 43% are not doing it and that means cultural change. Said 55 and Roshan 8 I would like to see Said spend the rest of his life incarcerated in a spectacularly uncomfortable place.
   

Shocking: Portrait of Said, 55, and Roshan, 8, on the day of their engagement, Afghanistan

Beside India, where girls are usually wed to boys who are only a couple of years their senior, the husbands may be decades older than their prepubescent betrothed. It is not uncommon for men to kidnap girls and rape them first before trying the knot. 

Culture ?

Since 2003, Sinclair has been traveling to remote corners of the world in countries like Nepal and Yemen to document weddings of child brides and their transformation into young mothers in the hope of giving them a voice and raising awareness of the problem. 

Experts agree that early marriage denies the girls education and robs them of their childhood because most young wives, burdened by grownup responsibility,d

o not get a chance to interact with their peers or carry on friendships outside the household. 

  

Ghulam, the 11-year-old bride from Afghanistan who was married off in 2005, was forced to drop out of school, giving up on her dream of becoming a teacher one day. Parents often remove their daughters from school even before they are engaged to limit their interactions with boys. 

In many cases, the girls are lorded over by their husbands and in-laws, leaving them vulnerable to domestic violence as well as physical, sexual and verbal abuse. 

Gruesome: Police woman Malalai Kakar (back right) arrests Janan, 35, after he tried to kill his 15-year-old wife Jamila for angering him by fleeing her home to stay with her mother following years of abuse

Underage wives who are lucky enough to escape from their husbands end up living in poverty, or worse. Some girls turn to prostitution to earn a meager income and enter brothels, where they are subjected to horrific abuse. 

Rock bottom: A young prostitute named China sits stunned after being beat up by a man visiting Kabele Five in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

Prakash Balami, 16, in Kagati Village in Nepal, while Sarita, left, 15, is seen covered in tears and sweat before she is sent to her new home in Rajasthan, India 

The pictures are heartbreaking. The practice is brutal, inhumane and repugnant. 

Most girls who enter early marriages are expected to get pregnant right away, which often leads to tragedy for both the mothers, who are still children themselves, and their babies.  

Adolescent wives are more likely to have obstructed labor because their bodies have not fully developed yet. Statistics show that pregnancy death for child brides is double that of women in the 20s, according to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

One doctor based in the Yemeni capital Sanaa listed some of the medical consequences of forcing girls into sex and childbirth before they are physically mature - ripped vaginal walls and internal ruptures called fistulas which can lead to life-long incontinence.

Girls are often too young to understand the concept of reproduction. The doctor said: 'The nurses start by asking, "Do you know what's happening?" "Do you understand that this is a baby that has been growing inside of you?"'

Unless international organizations take steps to reverse the troubling trend, it is estimated that over the next decade, 100 million more girls—or about 25,000 girls a day—will marry before they turn 18.

To learn more about the campaign to end the practice of early marriages, go to Too Young To Wed.

Hat Tip DPF 

Child Marriage

Reuters reports 

Following on from a post a couple of days ago on Child brides facts, we have this.

NEW YORK (TrustLaw) - Child marriage, which steals the innocence of millions of girls worldwide and often condemns them to lives of poverty, ignorance and poor health, is one of the biggest obstacles to development, rights groups say.

A girl under the age of 18 is married every three seconds -- that's 10 million each year -- often without her consent and sometimes to a much older man, according to the children's charity Plan UK. Most of those marriages take place in Africa, the Middle East or South Asia.

"This is one of the biggest development issues of our time and we're committed to raising the voices of millions of girls married against their will," Plan UK head Marie Staunton said in her introduction to "Breaking Vows," a recent global report on child marriage.

I agree justice must be given to these children. Stealing a child's childhood is an awful crime be it forced marriage or recruitment into militias, too often the fate of young boys in Africa.

From horrific childbirth injuries to the secret sale of "drought brides," the consequences of child marriage are explored in a multimedia documentary by TrustLaw, a legal news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation (childmarriage.trust.org).

"Young children have babies -- your life is ruined, your education is ruined," said Kanta Devi, who was 16 when she married in Badakakahera village in India's Rajasthan state.

"You become upset with everything in your life," she told TrustLaw.

There is no way any child should marry before 18 and even that is to early in my opinion.

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child considers marriage before the age of 18 a human rights violation.

But according to the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), there are more than 50 million child brides worldwide, a number that is expected to grow to 100 million over the next decade.

NZ law allows marriage at 16 with parental consent and I think it should be raised to 18 and the parental  consent part dumped. The age of consent ( sexual ) is 16 and should stay.

RIPPLE EFFECT

Rights activists say six of the eight U.N. Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015 are directly affected by the prevalence of child marriage -- the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger; achievement of universal primary education; promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women; reduction in child mortality; improvement in maternal health; and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

The ripple effect is devastating, experts say.

That this practice has the potential derail important UN goals shows just how despicable it is. 

Girls forced into early marriage rarely continue their education, denying them any hope of independence, the ability to earn a livelihood or of making an economic contribution to their households.

The practice also reinforces the concept of girls as worthless burdens on their families to be jettisoned as soon as possible.

Girls who complete secondary school are six times less likely to become child brides than contemporaries with less or no education, according to the ICRW, a Washington-based think tank.

The value of an education is clear. It's ironic that many families recognise this post schooling. 

But distance from schools and a lack of school fees often preclude education for the poorest girls, who are twice as likely to marry young as those from wealthier homes.

In Niger, Chad and Mali, more than 70 percent of girls are married before the age of 18, according to ICRW analysis of demographic and health data last year.

Bangladesh, Guinea, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Burkina Faso and Nepal have child marriage rates over 50 percent, the data showed.

Ethiopia, Malawi, Madagascar, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Eritrea, Uganda, India, Nicaragua, Zambia and Tanzania are all above 40 percent.

These figures are appalling. 

The reasons child marriages occur vary with the country and are rarely simple.

"Very often people are sort of quick to demonise, in some ways, the family members and the people who make the decisions about the marriage of girls," Jeffrey Edmeades, a social demographer with ICRW, told TrustLaw.

"But we're finding, for the most part, that people are making these decisions because they feel it's best for their daughters. Parents love their children and they do want the best for them. They're just not sure what the best is."

That is a cause for hope.

Edmeades, who has been working with aid agency CARE on a project to tackle child marriage in Ethiopia, gave the example of children in that country being betrothed before birth to cement strategic alliances between families.

In other cases, girls are married off early to ensure that their virginity, and thus their economic value as brides, is intact and the honor of the family is protected.

Meanwhile, debts and natural disasters, such as tsunamis and drought, can lead to girls being sold off as brides as families scramble for survival.

'SILENT HEALTH EMERGENCY'

Girls under 15, their bodies still developing and their pelvises narrow, are five times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than women over 20, the U.S. Agency for International Development estimates.

The vast majority of those deaths are in the developing world, where a lack of pre- and post-natal care and advanced procedures such as Cesarean sections makes pregnancy and childbirth far more risky than in rich countries. In Africa, for example, 60 percent of women and girls give birth without a skilled medical professional present, according to the U.N. World Population Fund.

Worldwide, 70,000 girls aged 15-19 die each year during pregnancy or childbirth, UNICEF says. The U.N. World Population Fund considers pregnancy the leading cause of death in that age group, citing complications of childbirth and unsafe abortions as major factors.

Children of child brides are also at risk. Babies born to mothers younger than 18 are more likely to be underweight or stillborn, Plan UK says.

Girls forced into early marriage are also at an increased risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS because they are unlikely to be able to negotiate safe sex with their husbands.

"Child marriage is a silent health emergency in the sense that it's often overlooked as a root cause of maternal mortality and morbidity (illness)," the ICRW's Edmeades said.

DRAWING MORE ATTENTION

While it is a subject still little known and rarely discussed in much of the Western world, the issue of child marriage is drawing greater attention from international aid and humanitarian organizations, as well as governments.

In the United States, where child marriage is rare, the U.S. Senate has reintroduced legislation aimed at curbing global child marriage that was unanimously passed in the Senate in 2010 but blocked in the House of Representatives.

Bloody republicans.

The International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act would establish a strategy over several years to prevent child marriage in developing countries.

It would also require the State Department to report on child marriage in its annual human rights report and integrate efforts to prevent the practice into current development programs.

The bill will be reintroduced in the House this autumn, according to Betty McCollum, a Democrat representative from Minnesota, who is its lead sponsor there.

It was blocked in the House last December primarily due to Republican concerns that it would help organizations supplying abortions, which "couldn't have been farther from the truth," McCollum told TrustLaw.

"It has nothing to do with abortion," she said. "It has everything to do with saving 12-year-old girls from being sold into slavery or sold to settle a family debt."

Right wing Republicans really piss me off.

Not only will it make aid dollars more effective, she added, but "it's a win for the child, it's a win for the community the child lives in and it's a win for the international community."

The Elders, an influential group of global leaders founded in 2007 by former South African President Nelson Mandela, gathered dozens of organizations for a two-day meeting in Ethiopia in June and have launched a campaign called "Girls Not Brides: the Global Partnership to End Child Marriage."

I worry about post Mandela South Africa and in fact Africa. The man is an incredible moral and political force for good.

Child Brides & Woman's Suffrage Day NZ

19th September 1893 an important day in our history. Kate Sheppard led the suffrage    movement. Female Labour MP's in NZ have a campaign going asking what would Kate think now.

To be honest I have no idea what she would think and nor do the MP's. She might well object to the politicisation of her image in a partisan campaign.  

                                                                   Kate Sheppard

" The Governor, Lord Glasgow, signed a new Electoral Act into law. As a result of this landmark legislation, New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world to grant all women the right to vote in parliamentary elections.

The passing of the Electoral Act was the culmination of years of agitation by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and other organisations. As part of this campaign, a series of massive petitions − including one earlier in 1893 signed by almost one in four adult women in New Zealand − were presented to Parliament.

In most other democracies – notably Britain and the United States – women did not win the right to vote until after the First World War. New Zealand’s world leadership in women’s suffrage became a central part of our image as a trailblazing ‘social laboratory’."

NZ History

However I am prepared to bet that she would be appalled to know that 119 years later that the world exploitation of females continues unabashed. 

From Reuters 

Key facts on child marriage around the world.

Tihun Nebiyu, 7, a girl from central Ethiopia, waits to be presented to her 17-year-old husband on her wedding day. Photo Chicago Tribune 

* Every three seconds, a girl under the age of 18 is married somewhere in the world, mostly in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.

* The practice affects a third of girls -- and some boys -- in developing countries, according to UNICEF, which describes child marriage as "perhaps the most prevalent form of sexual abuse and exploitation of girls."

* The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child says 18 years should be the minimum age for marriage.

* Child rights activists say marriage at a young age violates a child's basic human rights because they are too young to be able to give "free and full consent" -- a right enshrined in Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

* Child marriage is most common in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

* In many developing countries the practice is illegal but the law is often not enforced or it operates alongside customary and religious laws.

* Girls younger than 15 are five times more likely to die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth than women in their 20s. If they are 15-19, they are twice as likely to die.

* Girls under the age of 18 are more likely to develop obstetric fistula, which causes severe incontinence. This condition occurs during childbirth when a hole develops between the vagina and bladder or rectum.

* Girl brides are more likely to be infected with the HIV virus by their older husbands. A study in Kenya and Zambia by University of Chicago researchers found that among 15- to 19-year-old girls who are sexually active, being married increased their chances of having HIV by more than 75 percent.

* A girl bride is more likely to be beaten or raped by her husband and experience abusive relationships with her in-laws.

* The babies of child brides are 60 percent more likely to die before the age of one than children of women older than 19.

* Child brides are rarely allowed to go to school. Many are expected to bear and raise children and carry out domestic work for their in-laws.

* Girls from poor families are nearly twice as likely to marry before 18 than girls from wealthier families.

* The number of child marriages often increases during conflicts or natural disasters.

* Some families use marriage to build and strengthen alliances, to seal property deals, settle disputes or pay off debts.

We still have a long way to go Kate