The Pain Of Early Marriages Orchestrated By Displacement In Times Of Civil Strife

By Andrew Mayende

At the onset of civil strife, millions of lives are helplessly torn apart by conflict, disasters and displacement. Girls are particularly hit hard resulting to their exposure to many forms of violence among them being early marriages.

Displacement increases girls’ vulnerability to early marriages due to the breakdown of social networks, lack of other protection mechanisms and the risks of sexual violence.

Through conflict, many families are forced to adopt negative coping strategies to survive. This ultimately places women and girls at a higher risk of sexual violence. Sadly, rape, torture and forced prostitution, sometimes under the illusion of marriage, have reportedly been used as weapons of war thereby unilaterally weakening families and communities.

Statistically, nine out of the ten countries with the highest child marriage rates are considered either fragile or extremely fragile nations. Moreover, seven out of twenty countries with the highest early marriage rates face some of the worst humanitarian crises. Under such circumstances, early marriage cannot be ignored.

Glaring evidence shows that under such circumstances, early marriage rates increase, with a devastating impact on the affected girls. While gender inequality remains one of the main causes of early marriage in both stable and crisis contexts, often in times of crisis, families see early marriage as an escape route from economic hardship and as a way of protecting girls from the escalating violence. However, in reality it leads to a wide range of painful consequences.

Several cases of young girls turning to suicide as a last resort have been reported. Unfortunately, early marriage still remains an issue that is yet to be adequately addressed with conclusive solutions towards protecting the girl child.

Humanitarian crises emanating from conflict exacerbate poverty, insecurity and inaccessibility to vital needs such as education, all these being factors which catalyze early marriages.

For poor families who hardly have any source of livelihood, land and homes as a result of a crisis, marrying off their young daughters may seem like their only option towards alleviating economic hardship. Literally speaking, it reduces the number of “mouths to feed” or in some cases creates an avenue for extra income in the form of bride price.

Many families living in crisis prone contexts often see early marriage as a way to protect girls. Yet, on the flip-side, married girls end up experiencing increased sexual violence within marriage.

Culturally, female sexuality and virginity are associated with bringing honour and prestige to the family. Consequently, parents marry off their daughters while very young to guarantee their virginity at marriage. Whenever displacement occurs, early marriage also happens against girls and sometimes parents’ wishes.

It is under this backdrop that education comes in as a viable solution towards mitigating early marriage crisis. Whenever a girl gets access to quality education, she will be empowered to succeed economically, to make independent and well informed choices and to empower many other persons towards achieving bigger and worthwhile goals in life.

“When you educate a girl, you’ll have educated the whole community.”