Internationally there is a wide consensus that child marriage is a harmful practice for girls and that it needs to be eliminated. When you are aware of the risks and consequences to girls, this is not a hard thing to agree with. And a lot of work is being done to put an end to child marriages. In many countries where it has long been a tradition, it is no longer allowed and may even have been made a criminal offence. This all seems very sensible and a sign of progress, from a distance. Until reality comes knocking and everything becomes infinitely more complicated.
I want to state emphatically that I too oppose child marriage. And in my work to help organisations and governments to transition from institutional to family-based care, this is an issue that needs to be kept in mind. Because in some cases, if you move a teenage girl out of an institution and send her back to her family, there could be a risk that they will get her married as soon as possible. In these cases, it is important to provide counselling and awareness-raising to inform the family of the risks involved and monitoring to make sure that the family agreeing not to arrange a marriage for the girl was not just to end the discussion.
As long as you are talking about preventing child marriage, it is all relatively clear-cut and simple. However, preventing child marriage is not the only issue on the table. There are also the girls who have already been married and are pregnant or already have a baby. This is where things get a lot more complicated.
A 15-year old girl arrived at an institution with her newborn baby. She was placed there because the hospital where she gave birth notified the police when they realised that this was a case of child marriage. And because she was indeed a child bride, she was removed from her husband and family ‘for her protection’. The girl was understandably extremely distressed to suddenly find herself and her baby institutionalised. She ate very little, usually refusing to eat, was agitated and unable to take the rest she needed to recover from the delivery, pretty soon, she started self-harming. And she was unable to care for her baby, in her distress.
As part of the newly developed team in the organisation to prevent institutionalisation and to look at the possibility of reintegration of children arriving at the institution, a caseworker and a counsellor took charge. They talked with the girl and her family (who lived in a remote village where the anti-child marriage had not penetrated and the tradition was continued) and made a plan.
It was clear that it was in the best interest of the girl and her baby for her to go back to her family, and that keeping them in the institution might put their lives at risk. So, a plan was developed to counsel the girl’s family and talk with her husband and his family to reach an agreement that the girl and her baby were to go back to her family. And that she would not go back to her husband until she was 18. It would take some time to make sure that everyone was very clear about the arrangement and in full agreement, and it would need to be monitored closely. However, it seemed feasible and what would be best for both children.
So far, so good. However, then we ran into a wall with the authorities. Theory and practice crashed head-on. The local child protection authority had placed the girl and her baby in the institution and needed to give permission for her to return to the family. And they were very clear about the fact that child marriage is wrong, and the girl’s parents had put her in danger by marrying her off. In other words, for her protection, the girl could not be returned to her parents. This is all completely in line with the theory of ‘child marriage is wrong, it has to be stopped’. However, it does not take into account the two lives that are put at risk by blindly following this line of thinking.
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