Child marriage has been in vogue in Bangladesh for centuries. The country has the world's fourth highest rate of child marriage, according to the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the situation is getting worse with natural disasters. According to a recent study conducted by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), six districts of Bangladesh - Bhola, Kurigram, Magura, Nawabganj, Niphamari and Satkhira - have the highest prevalence of child marriages. The child brides suffer from high incidence of pregnancy complications and anaemia (42 per cent among the women of reproductive age where teen mothers share one-third of this percentage, BDHS 2011), along with low birth weight of children along with high rate of neonatal and maternal deaths. Currently the child marriage rate in Bangladesh is 59 per cent according to Bangladesh Demographic Health Survey (BDHS) 2014 and 52 per cent according to Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) 2012. Child marriage is illegal in Bangladesh since 1929, and the minimum age of marriage has been set at 18 for women and 21 for men since the 1980s. In spite of that the country, according to UNICEF, has the highest rate of child marriage of girls under the age of 15 in the world while 29 per cent of girls get married before the age of 15, a total of 66 per cent of women get married before they turned 18 and what is most terrifying is that two per cent of girls in Bangladesh get married before age 11.
At the 2014 Girl Summit in London, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced her vision to end child marriage under 15 in Bangladesh by 2021 and child marriage under 18 by 2041.
But failure to enforce the existing law against child marriage, not paying proper attention to the factors such as Bangladesh's high vulnerability to natural disasters that stands out as the main cause poverty for many families, lack of access to education by the girl children, high secondary school dropout rate, social norms and values that lead to most of the marriages arranged by the parents, sexual harassment of unmarried girls, lack of social security, social pressures and traditions including the evil practice of dowry and most importantly, lack of awareness of the parents and psychological consequences of child marriage is making the pledge to end child marriage relatively difficult.
Disastrous consequences from both physiological and psychological aspects of early marriage are many. It has to be borne in mind that the girls getting married at a very early age cannot have a normal childhood like other girls. At this age, less mental adoptive capacity creates depression at a very early period of life. Inability to cope with the new environment, hostile attitudes from in-laws, unacceptability of being engaged into sexual intercourse at a very early period of life and lacking of freedom about putting own perspective about those incidents also make them vulnerable in psychological sense. The most prominent reflection of the harmful consequences can be derived if we consider the physiological impacts of early marriage. A young girl before crossing her childhood is forced to be engaged in sexual interaction.
The body not being developed for sexual act has to bear children early. This is very likely to result in different harmful physiological consequences such as obstetric fistula, haemorrhage and can also cause life-threatening risks, even death. Among the girls of the age group of 15-19, pregnancy-related deaths are one of the leading causes of deaths worldwide. Keeping the particular context of Bangladesh in mind, it is now high time we start our mission towards diminishing the incidents of child marriages with a view to providing our girls a safe and peaceful social life to live with respect and ensure a healthy life for them.
The writer is a student of Department of Population Sciences, University of Dhaka.
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- Sunday, 17 November 2024 |
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