New Delhi: Tens of thousands of women in Asia are forced to marry through desperate families mired in poverty due to the coronavirus pandemic, while activists warn that years of progress are being made in the fight against practice.
Child marriage has not long been unusual in classical communities from the Indonesian archipelago to India, Pakistan and Vietnam, however, their numbers are declining as charities move forward in promoting access to education and fitness for women.
These innovations are eroding as the effect of the virus leads to large task losses, which causes parents to struggle to feed their families, experts say.
“All the progress we’ve made over the past decade is going to suffer,” Shipra Jha, director of Asia Engagement, told the NGO Girls Not Brides.
“Child marriage is firmly rooted in gender inequality and patriarchal structures. What happened was that it got worse in Covid’s time,” he adds.
Poverty, lack of schooling and lack of trust are at the root of child marriage even in times of stability, so times of crisis aggravate the problem, according to the charity.
Worldwide, around 12 million women marry a year before the age of 18, according to the UN.
But the organization has now warned that unless urgent action is taken to combat the economic and social effect of the virus, another thirteen million child marriages will take place over the next decade.
In Asia, charities report that the snowball of forced unions has already begun, estimating that tens of thousands of people are already affected; no concrete knowledge has yet been collected.
“There has been an increase in child marriages in this age of confinement. There is endemic unemployment, loss of tasks. Families are slightly able to make it to the end of the month, so they think it’s more productive to marry their young daughters,” says Rolee Singh. who runs the India Campaign “1 Step 2 Stop Child Marriage”.
Muskaan, 15, says she is forced to marry the 21-year-old neighbor through her mother and father, who are street cleaners in the Indian city of Varanasi and have six other young men to feed.
“My parents are poor, what else could they have done?I fought as hard as I could, but I still had to give in,” the teenager says in tears.
Save the Children has warned in the past that violence against women and the threat of forced unions, especially among minors, “could be a greater threat than the virus itself. “
And while schooling has been hailed as the central precept of combating child marriage, activists warn that with closures that force millions of people not to go to school, women in the world’s poorest regions will be the hardest hit.
Earlier this month, 275 former global leaders, education experts and economists suggested to governments and organizations like the World Bank that the consequences of coronavirus do not create a “COVID generation . . . deprived of their education and a just possibility in life . . . “
“Many of these young women are teenage women for whom being in school is the defense against forced marriage and the hope of a life richer in opportunity,” said an open letter signed through dignitaries who added to Ban Ki-Moon, a former UN secretary general. , UNICEF Carol Bellamy and former prime ministers such as Pakistani Shaukat Aziz Aziz Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.
In India, activists say there has been an increase in forced unions because families see the practice as a solution to the monetary disorders caused by Covid-19, unans without knowing that they have an effect on young women.
“We have also noticed that young people get married because the other party gives cash or some kind of reward. These families don’t perceive the concept of trafficking, it’s a tendency to be concerned,” says activist Singh.
Jha, which was founded in Delhi, that economic tension is a component of the problem, but insists that child marriage is complex, especially in Asia, where there are fears that final closed schools mean that inactive teens will turn to each other and damage the family’s reputation.
“Families’ biggest concern is that (teenage girls) approach a child, start exploring their sexuality, or are pregnant. The honor is very similar to this Array scenario . . . It’s a huge thing,” he adds.
He adds that the challenge has worsened as governments move resources from key spaces of progression such as education, the circle of family members who make plans, and reproductive fitness to fight the virus.
Indonesia’s circle of relatives making strong plans warned that the country, which already houses 270 million people, could see a massive baby boom early next year due to school closures and reduced access to contraception.
At 18, Lia is still a minor, but she has already been married twice. Her first union was imposed after she was seen alone with the boy who was not a father, a taboo in the conservative region of western Sulawesi of Indonesia, where she lives.
The network insisted that she marry the boy despite a three-decade age difference.
She escaped this bad luck and discovered a new love, but her dreams of a high-flying race were postponed again.
With little access to a circle of family members advising her on plans, she became pregnant with childbirth. His circle of relatives insisted that he marry the 21-year-old father.
“I used to dream of placing a stewardess,” recalls the teenager, who asked for her genuine call to be used.
“But she failed and ended up in the kitchen,” interrupts her new husband Randi, who did declare her marriage to the authorities.
Indonesia, which has one of the world’s child marriage rates according to UNICEF, raised the legal age for marriage from 16 to 19 for both sexes last year to address the problem.
But there are gaps: local courts can approve such unions.
Indonesia’s Islamic government officially legalized more than 33,000 child marriages between January and June this year, with a total of 22,000 for the 2019 total, according to the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection.
Indian leader Narendra Modi also said the country would raise the age to marry from 18 to 21, but Girls, Not Brides says such measures are difficult to put into effect and do not address the root causes.
In Vietnam, the legal age to marry is 18, yet UNICEF says one in ten women are already married. Among ethnic groups, this figure is almost double.
Local charity Blue Dragon says it has noticed that women up to the age of 14 and children’s unions have been in the since schools were closed because of the pandemic.
On 15 May, who hails from the mountain tribes of northern Hmong, she married in June her boyfriend employed in the 25-year-old structure after becoming pregnant while the virus ravaged the country.
Her parents were unable to stay with her and the baby, so she moved six hours to the farm in her husband’s family circle.
“They’re farmers and they couldn’t earn enough for us,” he says.
Now, to do your homework, clean and help harvest the crops.
“I don’t think much about my future,” he admits.
UNICEF says ending child marriage will break intergenerational cycles of poverty.
He says: “Self-reliant and knowledgeable women are better at feeding and caring for their children, leading to smaller, healthier families. When women can be women, everyone wins. “
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