IN POWERFUL COMPANY Taking on the Challenge to End Child Marriage with The Elders

Old palace of King Haile Selassie, now University of Addis Ababa

In the space of twelve hours I shared a drink with one ex President, had dinner with one ex Prime Minister, sat next to the only lady in the world to be both a minister and First Lady of two countries and greeted one Nobel Laureate. In the meeting I was attending, I had very august company. But I guess you need such fire-power if you have to start a global campaign to end one of the most persistent, shameful but extremely common forms of traditional practice that plagues large parts of the world. This traditional practice, which many choose to believe is a thing of the past, but is openly endorsed by political and religious leaders in India, is child- marriage. Sixty concerned persons from all over the world had gathered together at Addis Ababa for a meeting called by The Elders, to discuss ways of ending this regrettable practice. The four stalwarts Desmond Tutu, Gro Bruntland, Graca Machel and Mary Robinson represented the group The Elders, which had been brought together by Nelson Mandela on his 89^th birthday in 2007 to deal with pressing global issues. The Elders had now decided to put their considerable political and moral clout to take the issue of child marriage head on.

While I still consider my daughter of 19 years to be my baby, many fathers don’t hesitate to send their 15 year, or 12 year or even 10 year old daughters off to a stranger’s house in marriage. The meeting started with the screening of a documentary giving a grim and poignant portrayal of a child-bride’s travails and helplessness. It covered girls from Afghanistan, Yemen and also from India and they are also part of a story in the National Geographic . With the stage set The Elders provided the gathered group how they had earlier missed identifying this issue as important even when they had been tackling related issues like child rights and maternal mortality in their official capacties, and explained why they are working on it now. A recent study highlighted the chilling statistics that nearly one third of all 12 year olds are married in one region of Ethiopia and nearly half of all 18 year olds in India are married. The discussions showed how this one social injustice affected over 10 million girls every year, and if eliminated would influence six of the eight anti-poverty millennium development goals which all countries of the world were committed to.   

In India we can be proud that we have had a law against child marriage for over 80 years, we can also be ashamed that this law has hardly ever been used to stop child marriage. In states like Rajasthan thousands of child marriages take place on the auspicious occasion of “akha teej”. Everyone knows and looks the other way, even the police. The political and religious leaders come to bless the child bride. One study done by a group in Lucknow had come up with the remarkable finding that the law against child marriage was exclusively used by parents when they wanted their daughters to stop marrying a man of her own choice. They would fudge the records to show adult daughters as being under-age and charge their son-in-laws of both kidnapping and child-marriage. The well-known Bhanwari Devi case in Rajasthan ( filmed as Bawandar), recalls the ugly event in 1992, where a group of upper caste men raped a lower caste worker of a women’s development scheme for stopping a child marriage. The judicial system also failed her when the trial court acquitted the accused. Years later in 2005, a woman’s hand was chopped off in Madhya Pradesh for daring to interfere in the practice.    

Indian society has been resisting efforts to end child marriage for well over a hundred years. In the late nineteenth century, there were two cases one of Phulmonee Devi in Bengal who died of vaginal bleeding at age eleven and that of Rukhmabai in Maharashtra who was married at eleven and refused to go and live with her husband. Both these legal cases demanding raising age at marriage, were bitterly opposed by Hindu religious critics. The Indian law against child marriage ( Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929) could only come about because Rai Harbilas Sarda, the chief proponent of the Act realized the dangers of child marriage after his child bride died in pregnancy. The risk of maternal mortality is many times higher in young girls, but even today a significant proportion of 18year old girls are married and have children as well.

Old Palace of King Menelik II on Entoto Mountain

While India has a law which is flouted, we learnt in the meeting that some countries don’t even have laws around early marriage and even in advance nations like the US. In the US three states don’t have any minimum age, while in many others minors can marry with parental or court permission! We learnt that the problem in the US or in Europe is not as acute with the median age at marriage being quite high, despite weak laws. But in many African countries, just like in India, the law is no protection against child marriage. Studies have suggested that in South East Asia, this ugly phenomenon has disappeared in a couple of generations and education of the girl child was considered as the most important factor. The meeting ended with all of us agreeing to come together and highlight this issue at all levels. Hopefully with such energy and inspiration this practice will soon be challenged within our passive and accepting society.

Carrying one's shopping back from Mercato market

Having gone all the way to Addis Ababa it would have been a pity if I did engage in some tourism. For those interested in history or more precisely prehistory there was an excellent collection of fossils on human evolution in the local museum. The Merkato market reminded me of the old city bazaars like Chandni Chowk (Delhi), Burrabazar ( Kolkata) or Chowk-Aminabad ( Lucknow). The Ethiopians were very friendly and greeted us with a Namastey wherever we went. However my pleasant Ethiopian experience came to a crashing end when I was off loaded from the Ethiopian Airlines flight to Delhi. I had a confirmed ticket, I had checked in on time, I had a boarding pass, but still I was left behind. It is not surprising that it is a government enterprise, and I shared the same fate that many tourists must have faced with our very own Air India. I stoically spent the extra day in Addis in the true spirit of South-South solidarity.   

A short slideshow on the St George's Church