WUNRN
REPORT CALLS ON THE GOVERNMENTS OF
SOUTH ASIA TO STOP THE HUMAN RIGHTS CRISIS OF CHILD MARRIAGE
Direct Link to Full 39-Page 2013
Report:
Accountability for Child Marriage -
Fact Sheet
10.10.13 - At a time when girls in many
countries are thinking about their math homework or planning their next
birthday party, Rahar Maya Biswokarma was trying to understand what it meant to
be married at the age of 10.
“I
was turned into someone’s wife before I knew what it meant to me,” said Rahar
Maya, in a magazine interview. She is now a 50-year-old mother of grown-up
children, living in Nepal. “I felt I was discarded and my parents no longer
loved me….All my joy was gone at once.”
Rahar
Maya is one of a countless number of victims of a centuries-old tradition that
to this day violates the full range of human rights, very often with
devastating consequences for the health and well-being of the girl forced to
marry.
South Asia is home to almost half of all child marriages that take place
in the world.
This happens despite the fact that most countries have national laws in place
prohibiting child marriage and constitutional norms affirming that fundamental
rights deserve the highest protection by government. And despite the fact that
governments have signed international human rights treaties which have been
interpreted as supporting the establishment of a minimum legal marriage age of
18.
Estimates
suggest that as many as 130 million girls will marry between 2010 and
2030—unless governments stop this practice immediately.
Rahar
Maya’s story is, therefore, all too common. Child marriage has damaged her
irreparably—both emotionally and physically.
She
gave birth to her first child at 15. A very short time after the delivery, she
suffered uterine prolapse, a condition in which the uterus descends from its
normal position, and it is directly related to the extremely young age at which
she gave birth. For more than three decades, she suffered pain and
embarrassment until she could finally get surgery.
Meanwhile,
she says she felt abandoned by her parents, emotionally neglected by her
husband, and shunned by his family for failing to live up to expectations that
would be more easily navigated by an adult.
Missing
from Rahar Maya’s life were the dignity and many layers of personal fulfillment
that come when an individual’s human rights are protected and nurtured. By its
very nature, child marriage triggers a continuum of violations that spreads
across a girl’s life into womanhood and robs millions of girls and women of
their fundamental rights:
All
of these issues are inextricably linked to the rights of girls and women.
“Child marriage violates the human rights of girls in the most profound ways
and perpetuates the oppression of women,” says Melissa Upreti, the Center’s
Regional Director for Asia. “The high incidence of child marriage in South Asia
illustrates the lack of commitment of governments in the region to end this
harmful practice despite clear evidence of the devastating impact on girls’ and
women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights and dignity as human beings.
This publication is intended to serve as a resource for those looking to hold
their governments legally accountable for child marriage so that the goal of
ending child marriage in a generation may be achieved.”
International
law is clear. Human rights bodies across the globe have been utterly direct:
Children below the age of 18 should not be forced to marry. Both parties to a
marriage must consent. But many governments continue to ignore the problem in
practical terms even as they officially condemn the practice.
Child
marriage also violates girls’ rights as protected under national constitutions
throughout the region. “Child marriage is not just a human rights crisis in
South Asia, but also a grave violation of girls’ constitutional rights,” says
Payal Shah, Senior Legal Adviser for Asia. “Governments own constitutions
obligate them to protect girls from the continuum of harms, including
reproductive health risks and sexual violence, resulting from child
marriage.”
It’s
time for governments in the region to be accountable to their own laws and
those enshrined in international law, and fix the systemic problems that allow
child marriage to continue. Child marriage cannot be justified in the name of
culture or tradition. This is a human rights crisis, but one that is imminently
solvable.