The marriage of children

how we live — By Bob Riel on October 18, 2007 at 7:20 am

When asked about her engagement party this summer, little Sunam glanced blankly at her family, then fiddled with her gold-sequined engagement outfit, a speechless response not out of shyness, but because she does not yet talk much. Sunam is 3.

The toddler was engaged to her 7-year-old cousin Nieem in June, in a match made by their parents.

So begins a recent story by the Associated Press. The marriage or engagement of young children may not be widespread around the world but it’s a common practice in some cultures, particularly tribal ones. The AP article discusses this issue as it appliesÂ to rural Afghanistan.

Despite the efforts of the government and rights groups, the engagement and marriage of children still persists in this country, especially among poor, uneducated families or in the countryside.

About 16 percent of Afghan children are married under the age of 15, according to recent data from UNICEF. And there is evidence that the poverty of recent years is pushing down the marriage age further in some areas…

The minimum legal age of marriage in Afghanistan is 16 for girls and 18 for boys. Yet child marriages account for 43 percent of all marriages, according to the United Nations. The reasons are often economic: The girl’s family gets a “bride price” of double the per capita income for a year or more, according to the World Bank…

The families of Sunam and Nieem are convinced that if the two grow up together knowing they will be married, they will be happy to wed in the future. The plan is for them to marry when Sunam is 14 or 15. Nieem’s mother, Fahima, said if the children grow up to dislike each other, the families will break off the arrangement. “It’s their whole lives. If they don’t like each other they will have problems their whole lives,” she said.

But according to the children’s aunt, Najiba, the match is unbreakable. “We are Pashtun people. If we engage them, there is no way to separate them. They will marry,” Najiba said. “In our tribe, it is like this. When they get engaged, they cannot divorce.”