AFGHANISTAN: Child marriage still widespread

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/a725d447bcd8502e55d5a5b43e0b0ea6.htm

KABUL, 13 July (IRIN) - The United Nations, government officials and rights bodies in the Afghan capital, Kabul, have expressed grave concern about the widespread practice of girls marrying early, as the country marked World Population Day on Tuesday.

Nearly 60 percent of marriages in Afghanistan involve girls below the legal age of 16, according to reports from the Ministry of Women's Affairs and NGOs. Some girls are married as young as nine.

Rights and health activists say that such marriages increase the maternal mortality rate and deny young women an education or any kind of independent life. Often, after a child marriage, husbands and/or parents-in-law refuse to allow the child-wife to go to school under threat of violence.

"Badakhshan has the highest maternal mortality rate in the country and one of the main reason is under-age marriages - even as young as seven in some cases. This needs to be addressed," Paul Greening a project officer of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said on Wednesday in Kabul.

[UrbScotty]

1. Ah, yes, the sanctity of marriage. (nt)

[endarkenment]

2. here is an unpopular opinion:

If Afghani culture considers child marriages normal that is really not much of our business. It was within my lifetime that states right here allowed marriage as young as 12 or 13.

[Zenlitened]

5. I disagree, There are biological factors at work here, not just...

... cultural perspectives.

Getting married doesn't suddenly, magically make a girl a woman. Her body -- not to mention her mind -- remains that of a child.

And any man who would have sex with a child is a sicko, plain and simple, no matter what culture he's in.

The fact that the practice used to occur in the US seems irrelevant. It was wrong here then, it's wrong there now.

[endarkenment]

6. define child

I agree that having sex with children is of course wrong, but what is a 'child' is a culturally biased perspective. Also it may very well be that 9 year olds are hardly ever married, and/or that early marriages do not involve sex at all until the 'biological factors' are appropriate. It might in fact be the case that young girls are married into households and live there essentially as wards until they are old enough to be wives, and that we are completely misinterpreting their culture through our eyes.

What if the choice is starvation or marriage? What then?

My only point here is not to defend having sex with children, it is that we have no idea what the entire picture is and we are running off to pass judgement using our concepts and forcing them onto a foreign culture.

[Zenlitened]

8. I'm glad you made that clarification. The article discusses...

... in a prominent way the issue of sex with children, and that's the basis of my opposition.

As for the issue of girls being married into households and living as wards, my own feeling is there are self-determination issues involved there, and that the starvation-versus-marriage scenario is a call to eradicate poverty, not to condone child marriage.

That said, I'll concede there may be "gray areas" when the cultural factors alone are the point of discussion. I'm certainly glad -- relieved, actually -- that child rape is not a topic for a pro-versus-con debate on DU!

:hi:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. That custom used to be common in China

A child bride would go live with her future husband's family from the age of nine or ten, but the marriage wouldn't be consummated until she reached puberty.

However, "ward" is the wrong word for the true status of these Chinese child brides. In reality, they were used as unpaid housemaids who could be ordered around and beaten at will, i.e. slaves.

[oneold1-4u]

7. You are in fantasy -

-If you think for one minute that those things don't happen here and in other societies yet today!
There are millions of unwanted female children in islamic families and if they can't sell them or give them to a relative for a wife, then they die. It is also a fact that a female is expected to have her first child within the first year of puberty, and is often thrown out or killed if that does not occur. The same usually happens if a male child is not born within three years or less!
Consider this from a liberal who must condemn any group, church, government, or individual, that condones USING children (under 14-15) for trade, marriage, sex, forced labor, or forced military.
I do know that many female children were sold or given into prostitution here in the US, often through the hard times, when they would have otherwise simply died of starvation or diseases of malnutrition. They were not all marked for life because they grew into personal freedom. Women of Islam are denied most of the simplest, so they know no freedom.

[Book Lover]

9. And maternal mortality was high here when that happened, too

This is a health issue almost more than a rights and/or cultural issue. While I must agree with your position that the US has no right to impose by force of arms our cultural marriage norms (and as I understand, the age of consent with parental permission in Texas is 13, so this Afghan practice on paper is the same as one of our US norms), I cannot agree that the international health community should turn a blind eye to this practice. Maybe a better solution is to advance the position that there are concrete steps that can be taken to ensure the physical and mental well-being of the wife, and therefore the children, in such marriages.

Now I'm going to contradict myself a bit. As I see it, the only way for such an idea to take root is if the mental and physical well-being of the wife is a priority for the husband as well as the men in control of enforcing the cultural norms in the Afghan nation; this is where we get to the cultural imperialism you are against. I wish I had the magic formula balancing these two issues.

[endarkenment]

12. me too

it isn't like I have a good answer. I started to pontificate about how we should deal with this and threw it out as it was total pompous bullshit.

[LeighAnn]

10. Yeah, leave those kids alone

I can be even more unpopular than you!

Mankind would never have survived as a species if 14 year-olds had been forbidden to have sex throughout history.

I just watched Splendor in the Grass last week, I'm still depressed over it. They should have let those kids alone. Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty knew what to do, it was their goon-headed parents who jacked it all up for them. Human instinct is powerful, I say that it is human instinct for teens to have sex. I don't see what good it has done society for people to be pretending that's not the case. We look upon teen pregnancy as a crisis and make teen mothers feel like they've made a grave mistake in doing what women have done all throughout history. And if a 20 year old man impregnates a 15 year old, instead of encouraging them to get married and live happily ever after like normal human beings would have in the olden days, we want to put the man in prison and call him a sexual offender for the rest of his life, and put the mother and baby on welfare.

[Nikia]

21. I think in Afganistan

What the girl wants is rarely taken into consideration. Even if they would have some choice in their spouse, I don't think that wanting to have sex is their promary motivation for them to marry. Given the treatment of wives, I think many of these girls would prefer to marry later or not at all if they had other options.

[Cocoa]

17. consider where the human rights orgs are coming from

Rights and health activists say that such marriages increase the maternal mortality rate and deny young women an education or any kind of independent life. Often, after a child marriage, husbands and/or parents-in-law refuse to allow the child-wife to go to school under threat of violence.

[endarkenment]

18. I understand all that.

Here is another data point: this sort of culture basically disappears as poverty is eliminated. And another data point: Afghan was a fairly enlightened islamic state where women, except perhaps in the outlying regions, were well off compared to most other islamic states. Then the troubles started in the 70's and by the 90's Afghanistan was a classic failed state, the people were miserably impoverished, and the status of women was horrendous.

My point continues to be that attacking their culture is not the answer. Empowerment through improvement of the economy will naturally take care of medievil social arrangements.

[napi21]

3. What's the life expectancy in Afghanistan?

The reason I'm asking is that back in my grandmother's day, very young girls got married too. Life expectancy back then was 50+. Many men and women died in their late 30's.

Obviously, 7 and 9 year olds is riduculous, but before you slam the entire Country for abuse, I think we need to review their culture and history.

[Nikia]

20. Death in childbirth was common too

Especially where medical technology is lacking, women are most able to survive pregnancy in their twenties. She might die in childbirth having her first child at thirteen or fifteen. If she waited until she was 20 to have her first child, she might survive to have 3 or 4 more even if she died in her thirties.
I am not positive on the it was naturual for young women to marry and become mothers arguement. I have done extensive geneology work back to Colonial times and most of my female relatives married between the ages of 18-24.

[oneold1-4u]

4. The great American push for freedom

The US destroyed any semblance of equality for women and allowed the worst type of rule that country has known for decades. They need to use the women who were able to leave, to return with protection to enhance womens rights again! Destroy the usurpers of rights and even allow the women to run the country! There are thousands of women in higher education in the US and free world who could give Islam a much needed legacy and remove the filth and terrorism from that male dominated ugly faith!

[Gildor Inglorion]

11. It isn't just Islam and it isn't just Afghanistan...

many of the same practices are widespread among the Hindu population of India. We're not going to impose our culture on the whole world overnight, if ever. I remember when I was in Vietnam, being amused by policemen and soldiers walking hand-in-hand. I thought it was charming, but most of my straight fellow soldiers thought it was disgusting. I'm not by any means comparing the seriousness of the situations, but we look at the world through American eyes and are shocked - shocked! that other people don't behave the way we wish they would. Education and improvement in the lives of women in other countries will be an excruciatingly slow process, subject to frequent setbacks, as witness the deteriorating state of women in Iraq.

[devilgrrl]

13. I hear child marriage is widespread in parts Utah too.

So where's the outrage?

[WinkyDink]

15. WHEREVER

it is, it's rape. End. Of. Story.

[endarkenment]

16. so you suggest we go in at gunpoint

at put a stop to child marriages in afghanistan and elsewhere?

it is so easy to take the moral high ground and issue global edicts. Bad afghanis. Cease.

[Nikia]

19. This is why we should care

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/328/7449/1152-a
Very young women are more likely to die in child birth than women in their 20's. They are also more likely to have their babies die.
Sure, a woman who starts having babies at twelve can have more children if she survives to menopause, but if she dies with her baby during her first pregnancy, she never got to be a mother (addressing the "women need to start having babies early to be reproductively fit" arguement.
We need to understand too that these girls aren't as healthy as American teens. A fifteen year old pregnant American teen is in much better shape to have a successful pregnancy than a 15 year old Afgani teen.

[Beelzebud]

22. But we liberated 25 million people there didn't we?!?!!?!