Imagine you are pregnant with a baby girl. You carried her for nine months, endorsed through countless painful nights, multiple appointments and ultrasounds, educated yourself on how to provide her with anything and everything, and then finally you gave birth. But she is not yours to take care of anymore. She is not yours to love, to hold in your arms when you want to protect her from the cruel world, to share her happiness and bask in the glow illuminated in her eyes. She is not yours. Why? Because her father had promised her off at birth to a man triple her age in order to settle debts he had accumulated all his life. What price could be offered then, that can settle a debt so big? The price of a child who has barely opened her eyes. Who has not even glanced at her mother. Who has yet to breathe in the new life she has been provided with. Who has yet to live before being forced off with a stranger who will provide her with a life far more devastating than the one her poverty-stricken parents could have provided [for her].
Child Marriage: “Child marriage is any formal marriage or informal union where one or both of the parties are under 18 years of age.” This is the life of various girls all over the world, especially in third-world developing countries. According to a study case, about 12 million girls are married off before the age of 18 every year. 23 girls every minute. 1 in 2 seconds. 12 million mothers, wives, sisters, cousins, aunts, grandmothers. 12 million girls who are wed off to a complete stranger, often ranging double/triple in age. 12 million girls who are robbed of their childhood before it even began. 12 million girls who are victims of rape, abuse, life-threatening diseases, and so forth. And no. This is not just a concept normalized in countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. It is a cultural aspect and it is present everywhere. America, the UK, even Canada (!). For every four girls in the UK, there is one who gets thrown into a forced marriage while being under the age of 18. In the U.S. about 248,000 children under the age of 12 were married between 2000-2010. And out of 50 states, 49 have made child marriage legal. Even though Canada is [still] fighting strong against child marriages, on September 2013, a report was liberated by the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario that about 220 cases of child marriages were documented in Ontario and Quebec from 2010-2012, both confirmed and suspected.
What is the point of all of this you may ask. Who cares? Why does this happen so often? Why are we not speaking up about it? Do parents not care about their children’s’ life? Why are we not implementing more laws and amendments in order to stop this from happening, at least in first-world countries where the laws are followed (mostly). Well, let me just put it into perspective. If it was your child that was forced into this, what would you do? Or if it was you yourself? A lot of the times, parents cannot do much but watch helplessly as they hand their child over to an outsider. Do you think parents want their child to suffer through rape, double the pregnancy troubles, high risks of death during pregnancy (before/after), having higher risks of being infected with STD’S, among many other horrors? No parent wants their child to go through a trauma like that. Sometimes though, circumstances change people in ways that never should have been… Parents will do anything in order to just get rid of the burden of having a daughter in their house that is unwed, or will sacrifice anything in order to uphold the respect and status they may have in society. However, there are many other factors that play a key role as to why child marriages are [still] so prevalent on a global scale.
If education could be just as heavily normalized as rape and child marriages were in countries like India, there would not be such a high number of child marriages. All innocent lives would be saved from being destroyed before even living, many parents would be saved from horrors of watching their daughter go through all of that, just to end up dead or with a divorce, and knowing these cultures, I do not know which one is worse. If cultural and social norms were considered less than lifelines, than we could save the millions of girls whose cases are filed, but are forgotten mere months later. If countries like India, Pakistan, Malaysia, did not rely so heavily on cultural aspects and factors for every driving task and need in their life, marrying off a 10 year old to a 30 year old for the sake of paying off a debt or to escape the never-ending cycle of poverty, would not be such a popular “trend.” If religious beliefs did not call for marrying a girl when she is a virgin in order to keep her family’s honour and dignity, we could save the countless deaths that have occurred just because a 14 year-old gave birth, because she was at double the risk of dying any time before, during, and after her pregnancy. If gender discrimination was simply about gender barriers created by male dominant workplaces, different countries would not be devaluing girls and women, and discriminating them. This discrimination for that matter, which leads to child marriages, domestic violence, rape, deprivation of healthcare, education, and other necessities. If [sex] trafficking was known to more people, that this is what child marriages are results of, then desperate parents would not feel the need to sell their daughter not only into marriage, but prostitution as well.
Child marriage have always and will always be a concern no matter who you are, where it is happening, who it is happening to, why it is happening, whatever it may be. The most terrifying thing is that it can happen to anyone, anywhere. Whether it is because of your impoverished circumstances and lifestyles, or a debt far too big that lays on your parents shoulders like a burden, child marriages are still happening. And they will continue to happen unless we can educate those that need to be. Until we can teach others that a child’s life is not some object or toy to be played around with, child marriages will keep on occurring. Until we as parents, or siblings, or advocates, cannot try to do anything, child marriages will keep on occurring. Until we can speak up and say that our daughters, our sisters, our mothers, our aunts, our cousins, we, deserve better, nothing will be better.
For those whose voices go unheard, for those whose cases that are opened only for a few months but never looked back, for those that had their innocence and youth stolen before they even opened their eyes, your fight will not go down in vain. Your voices will be heard. Your life will be restored back to you. Through our actions, big or small, physical or verbal, we will be just minuscule steps away from [hopefully] making child marriages a thing of the past. For now, do not lose hope and keep [on] fighting.
XO,
Sam♡