Child Marriage and Child Bride in Africa

Photo Credit: SitiTalkBlog

SitiTalkBlog depiction of a child bride in Northern Nigeria. Photo by Nonye Igwegbe, SitiTalkBlog Videographer, Abuja.

Poverty, guise of religion and lack of education are one of the major drivers of child marriage.

Worldwide, more than 700 million married women today married as children. 17% of them, or 125 million, live in Africa. Child marriage started long before civilization and development, in medieval times nobles betrothed their children to marriage among their wealthy families to keep up family ties and create new alliances. Development, education, principles of freedom, liberty and justice brought these practices almost to extinction. However according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) from 2000-2011 , an estimate of 34 percent of women in developing regions were in union or married before their eighteenth birthday, by 2010-2014 about 12 percent of women are married or in union before 15 years of age. We see that about 39% of girls in sub-Saharan Africa get married before 18 years of age. All African countries face the challenge of child marriage, whether they experience a high prevalence, such as Niger (76%) or lower rates like Algeria (3%). Child marriage is very rampant in West and Central Africa (42%) as well as Eastern and Southern Africa (36%). Boys are also sometimes married as children but following United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) reports girls are disproportionately the most affected.

Following reports from the investigative Non- Governmental Organization (NGO) Girls not Brides, poverty and illiteracy remains the most contributing factor that increases child brides in Africa. Africa has seen plagues of wars like; the Rwandan genocide in the 90’s, the Sierra Leone civil war and the recent incidence in Sudan that ended in its separation in 2011, they all gave in to instability which has kept abject poverty alive. It then comes down to survival for most parents who cannot take care of their children and see early marriage to lay off their burden. The children themselves are idle, they have no farms to till or school to go to, marriage now appears as a job or some form of activity; taking care of a man, household and bearing his children.

Conditions like religion, culture, social pressure all pale in comparison to poverty and gender discrimination. Reports from hrw.org prove a preponderance of incidents of child marriage in villages and less developed parts of countries in Africa. Big cities like Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt in Nigeria; Johannesburg and Cape Town in South Africa; Casablanca in Morocco witness not up to 3 percent of child marriages while less developed states like Kano, Katsina, Borno, Sokoto and Zamfara in the Northern parts of Nigeria experiences as high as 76 percent of all child marriages of the country, implying that all the huge numbers come from more backward states as well as the villages and rural areas where poverty rate is high and the lack of a good education causes its inhabitants to find solace in repugnant cultural practices and misinformed religious beliefs.

Suffice to say that 36 African countries have the minimum age of marriage at 18 for both girls and boys (Algeria, Angola, Botswana, Benin, Burundi, Central African Republic, Cape Verde, Comoros, Cote d’Ivoire, Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Libya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, south Sudan, Togo, Tunisia and Uganda) while 4 countries have it set beyond 18 years for both (Lesotho, Libya, Rwanda, Algeria). The disappointing fact is some countries above like Nigeria still allow especially girls below 18 years marry, especially due to lack of enforcement of the law against acts of pedophilia often masqueraded under the guise of child marriage supported by misinformed religious beliefs. Also, current laws are not always clear regarding what is considered “adult age” for marriage. As such , many countries that have the minimum age at 18 or so, still allow exceptions wherein girls below 18 years can get married but with their parents’ or the courts’ consent.

17 African countries either have discriminatory minimum age of marriage (girls and boys are allowed to marry at different ages), allow marriage below 18 years of age, or have inconsistencies between the minimum age of marriage and the minimum age of sexual consent. These countries include Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Seychelles, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

So we see in effect that most African countries have laws of some sort in place to at least begin to address the issue of child marriage. However, it comes down to poverty; poor families essentially use their underage daughters especially to secure their means of livelihood. In addition, the governments lack focused resolve to establish required infrastructure and facilities in the remote areas to promote education and good health. This leaves sufficient room for the mundane cultural practices some cultures allow. From recent happenings it will be justified to conclude that most African Governments lack genuine motivation to tackle and end child marriages, especially in Muslim Africa where religion is being used as an excuse to support child marriages. In the northern part of Nigeria and other parts of Africa where there are large numbers of Muslims, children as young as 13 years or younger have been married off and many of their old husbands are highly placed in government. Many of the highly placed men in government married their wives as child brides, some close to fifty years when their wives were twelve or thirteen years of age. By the age of 16 to 17 years, some of the child brides already had one to three children while their husbands were well over 50 years. In Nigeria, some of these men are unfortunately among those charged by the citizens of the country to enact civilized laws to protect them, especially, the vulnerable, which includes children.

In 2010 a Nigerian Muslim Senator Ahmed Yerima got married to a 13-year-old girl in Abuja the capital city where it is illegal to marry a woman below 18 years of age. Human Rights groups there like the Wellbeing Foundation Africa, called for his arrest as it is violates the law. Only by this sort of attitude that adequate awareness can be brought to this issue and causes some action to occur. It is important to note that he walked free and was never prosecuted for his actions. The child bride he married has since had children for him.

The problem with being a child bride is that it has no real benefit on the bride. Most child brides go through subjections of loss of basic rights like education and health. Due to lack of education and exposure they are prone to contract Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) easily and their fragile bodies are affected by early pregnancy. The UN reports that a whopping 70 000 child brides die every year due to STD, cervical cancer, obstetric fistula [vaginal fistula -Vesicovaginal fistula (VVF), a subtype of female urogenital fistula (UGF)], and early child-birth.

A Child bride is a huge slap in the face of the advancement women’s rights and human rights in general. Most if not all the situations occur without the child’s express consent, she is being deliberated on like chattel and sold to the highest bidder for a ‘bride price’; which is compensation given to families for wedding their female child. For example, it was alleged that the Nigerian Senator Ahmed Yerima paid $100 000 to the parents of the child bride he married. Yerima was unrepentant about his actions of marrying a child and cited his religion as supporting his actions.

A holistic development of the society is not possible when women cannot meet their full potential and contribute actively to grow the GDP of the country. On the 8th of July 2016 the BBC reports that Legislators in Tanzania passed a law banning marriage of boys or girls below 18years of age getting married under any circumstance. The Gambia followed suit by an announcement of their president Yahya Jammeh, declaring a decree outlawing the practice in a Muslim dominated society like The Gambia. While banning the practice of child marriage is a necessary and required beginning, it is extremely important that entire African and other societies and communities recognize that tackling child marriage is a strategic way of empowering health, education, work, and freedom from violence, and ensuring participation in public life and advancing women’s rights. Until all relevant stakeholders like religious leaders, the community, school teachers, administrators, health workers, police, prosecutors, government officials, the media, parents, boys and girls see this as a problem directly affecting the development and social progress of their country and decide to understand and commit in a role in extinguishing child marriage; then can we move forward.

REFERENCES AND USEFUL LINKS

IRIN Africa - NIGER: Early marriage – from rural custom to urban business - Niger - Children - Economy - Education - Gender Issues - Human Rights

http://www.fordfoundation.org/2011-annual/youth-sexuality-and-rights/map/

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/02/child_brides

https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/12/09/ending-child-marriage-africa

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/25/nigeria-senator-accused-child-bride

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage

http://www.girlsnotbrides.org/region/sub-saharan-africa/

http://www.icrw.org/child-marriage-facts-and-figures

https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/12/09/ending-child-marriage-africa

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2010/05/2010518858453672.html

http://www.unfpa.org/obstetric-fistula

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPOrpirlU3s

http://www.stephaniedaily.com/great-news-gambia-tanzania-have-banned-child-marriage/

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Ernie J. Burgher is a bi-lingual freelance journalist and author, and speaks English and French. Ernie writes for SitiTalkBlog.

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