02-11 Child Brides - John Bulloch

Unemployment and poverty driven by the global Covid-19 pandemic is forcing families to push their young girls into marriage.

My grandmother was one of six girls and two boys born in Romania. Only her brothers received any schooling. She worked in the family upholstery business beginning at age five. The father’s major task was to marry off the girls. Grandmother was married at age 17. She was one less mouth to feed.
Girls marrying before age 18 are considered child brides, and this is still legal in over 100 nations. In some Muslim nations marriage is legal once a girl reaches puberty. The photo shows two Muslim husbands with child brides.
What is happening around the world is increasing poverty and unemployment created by the global pandemic. This is forcing families to offer their children into marriage. Instead of offering a dowry to the groom’s family, the bride’s family gets paid.
And in many nations like India with surplus males because of sex-selection abortion, males with a level of wealth are in a good bargaining position to buy a child bride.
Many nations have outlawed child marriages. And they all have officials trying to enforce the law, but it is very difficult when people are desperate.
UN agencies publish estimated numbers of child marriages. How about a number of 12 million per year heading to a possible 50 million.
I can believe the advertisement opposing child marriage that suggests a quarter of the women alive today were child brides.
The ASEAN nations of Cambodia, Lao, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Philippines try to monitor child marriages. They suggest that in Thailand, for example, 23% of girls are married before age 18 and 4% before age 15. The equivalent statistics for the Philippines is 15% before age 18 and 2% before age 15.
There is a global organization set-up to curb child marriages called Girls Not Brides that has the support of 1300 organizations from 100 nations. But, all of their good work is being neutralized by the pandemic.
The great tragedy of the pandemic and the resultant explosion of child marriages is all the young girls taken out of school. And what that means for a nation’s economic development.