Bring Back Their Childhood
“I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside. Give them a sense of pride to make it easier. Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be.” These were the first four lines of the song “The Greatest Love of All” popularized and sung by the legendary singer, Whitney Houston.
It’s always fun being a kid – innocent, free-spirited, delicate and young. However, not for every child in the world. People hear about child labor, child prostitution, child molestation, and incest rape where the victim is a child, but rarely about child marriage. The issue is not new and has been practiced for decades. In such cases, no one is criminal. It stands on legal grounds, protected by tradition and religion.
Child marriage is a tradition in Islamic countries. However, it is practiced mostly by those who belong to the lower class where young girls are married off to men old enough to be their fathers. As of March 2013 the World Vision, an international non-governmental organization, determined the top 25 countries with the worst cases of child marriage. Among those countries are: Niger, Chad, Bangladesh, Guinea, Central African Republic, Mali, Mozambique, Nepal, Malawi, and Ethiopia which consist of the top 10. In Niger, 75 % of the girls marry before the age of 18, and 36 % marry before reaching 15 years old, where the eight-year-old is the youngest.
Recently, the world was shaken by the news about an eight-year-old Yemeni bride who died on the first night of her marriage. Rawan was said to have died due to internal bleeding after sexual intercourse with her middle-aged husband. Several cases like this have alarmed not only the World Vision and UNICEF but also the public. Another is the case of the eleven-year-old Nada al-Ahdal whose video caught the attention of people through the website YouTube earlier this year. She made the video after fleeing her parents’ house when faced with an arranged marriage. “What have the children done wrong?” she asked. In 2008, nine-year-old Nujood Ali made headlines when she sought and won divorce after two months of marriage with her 30-year-old husband. Her story, “I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced,” came out in 2010 to another flurry of media attention.
In our country, a similar practice is observed in Mindanao where a large number of Muslims are found. One such case is Nurina’s. She was 14 years old when she married Sid who was 23. “We were close friends. He treated me like a younger sister,” Nurina reported to IRIN News. “People started to gossip and my family insisted that we shall be married to avoid tarnishing my reputation.” Seven years later, Nurina is a third-year high school student and a mother of three. A total of 593 respondents from five provinces in ARMM who were younger than 18 at marriage were surveyed. The study shows that 83 % were 15-17, while 17 % were between nine and 14 years old. The ages of the respondents’ husbands ranged from 11-59 years, with 57 % between 17 and 21 at the time of marriage.
According to the research done by the International Center for Research on Women on the year 2010, there are four main causes of child marriage: poverty, limited education and economic options, insecurity in the face of conflict, and tradition and religion. Due to poverty, parents mark their kids with tag prices for men decades older than them. The younger the bride would be, the higher the dowry the girl’s parents would receive. Families view their daughters as economic assets. In Somaliland, Bangladesh, and Niger, child marriage, as based on World Vision’s report last March 2013, is perceived as a protective measure and used as a community response to the crisis. The top ten countries mentioned above where child marriage is great, are countries more vulnerable to the extremes of poverty. Aside from that, severe natural calamities, internal and cross-border conflict, civil war, high levels of corruption and political instability, and weak legislative frameworks and enforcement are viewed as drivers of child marriage. These reasons bring fears and anxieties that cause parents to encourage but, often coerce their children to marry at a young age.
Although child marriage provides the children’s family economically, it brings worse consequences for the child. At an early age, they are more likely to be exposed to maternal health risks, acquiring HIV/AIDS, and domestic and sexual violence. Their offspring are at an increased risk for premature birth and, subsequently, neonatal or infant death. Aside from that, their dreams to be someone would be stashed away from them leaving them depressed and obligated to carry the burden of a wife and a mother. It is not only their childhood that is deprived of them but especially the good future that awaits them.
Laws that attempted to cast out child marriage have always been cowered by the fact that it is a tradition, a command of the community’s culture. A very young bride’s husband generally is expected to wait until the girls reach puberty before “deflowering” them, but more often it is not observed. Still, setting the age at 18—actually older than Britain and many U.S. states—seems unlikely to make it into law. Countries like Yemen have plenty of other problems and brutality aimed at its women and children just doesn’t make the cut. Sunni-dominated Yemen had a minimum age of 15 written into law, but that was abolished in 1999 on religious grounds. Although it is traditionally legal, this practice still should be considered a violation of children’s rights.
Childhood is not always a happy place especially if it is already ripped apart by inhumane traditions, religion, and the depressing state of society. However, we can always make it a better world where kids can experience how beautiful it is to be a child. We could always take the necessary actions to take them away from that practice if not through laws then, through proper education. Only knowledge could bring them out of the idiocy of that tradition.
“And if by chance, that special place; That you've been dreaming of; Leads you to a lonely place; Find your strength in love…”