EARLY MARRIAGE - UNICEF

1 EARLY MARRIAGE A harmful traditional PRACTICEA STATISTICAL EXPLORATIONEARLY MARRIAGE A harmful traditional PRACTICEA STATISTICAL EXPLORATIONCONTENTSI. INTRODUCTION ..1II. GLOBAL ASSESSMENT OF CHILD MARRIAGE : REGIONAL TRENDS ..4 III. women AGED 20 24 IN UNION BY AGE 18 ..4IV. GIRLS AGED 15 19 CURRENTLY IN UNION ..12 Proportional disaggregation ..12 Distribution: Profile of a married girl ..15V. women IN POLYGYNOUS UNIONS ..18 women aged 15 49 ..18 Girls aged 15 19 ..20VI. CHILD MARRIAGE AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ..22 VII. CHOICE OF SPOUSE AND DECISION-MAKING ABILITY ..23 VIII. MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS ..25IX. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ..27 REFERENCES ..29 STATISTICAL TABLEST able 1: Percentage and number of women married by ages 15 and 18.

2 31 Table 2: Percentage of women aged 20 24 married by the exact age of 18 ..32 Table 3: Girls aged 15 19 currently in union ..34 Table 4: Distribution of girls aged 15 19 in union ..36 Table 5: Percentage of women in polygynous marriages ..38 Table 6: Percentage of girls aged 15 19 in polygynous marriages ..38 Table 7: Child MARRIAGE , domestic violence and choice of partner ..40 Table 8: Child MARRIAGE and decision-making ability ..40 ISBN: 92-806-3869-6 Cover photo: UNICEF /HQ97-0934/Shehzad NooraniText: The United Nations Children s Fund ( UNICEF ), 2005 EARLY MARRIAGE : A harmful traditional Practice1I. INTRODUCTIONM arriage before the age of 18 is a reality for manyyoung women .

3 In many parts of the world parentsencourage the MARRIAGE of their daughters whilethey are still children in hopes that the MARRIAGE willbenefit them both financially and socially, while alsorelieving financial burdens on the family. In actuality,child MARRIAGE is a violation of human rights, com-promising the development of girls and oftenresulting in EARLY pregnancy and social isolation,with little education and poor vocational trainingreinforcing the gendered nature of poverty. The right to free and full consent to a MARRIAGE isrecognized in the Universal Declaration of HumanRights with the recognition that consent cannot be free and full when one of the parties involved is notsufficiently mature to make an informed decisionabout a life partner.

4 The Convention on the Eliminationof all Forms of Discrimination against Womenmentions the right to protection from child marriagein article 16, which states: The betrothal and themarriage of a child shall have no legal effect, and allnecessary action, including legislation, shall be takento specify a minimum age for 1 Whilemarriage is not considered directly in the Conventionon the Rights of the Child, child MARRIAGE is linked toother rights such as the right to express theirviews freely, the right to protection from all forms ofabuse, and the right to be protected from harmfultraditional practices and is frequently addressedby the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

5 Childmarriage was also identified by the Pan-AfricanForum against the Sexual Exploitation of Children asa type of commercial sexual exploitation of married girls are a unique, though often invis-ible, group. Required to perform heavy amounts ofdomestic work, under pressure to demonstratefertility, and responsible for raising children while stillchildren themselves, married girls and child mothersface constrained decision-making and reduced lifechoices. Boys are also affected by child marriagebut the issue impacts girls in far larger numbers andwith more intensity. UNICEF s Innocenti Research Centre published thedigest EARLY MARRIAGE : Child Spouses in 2001,exploring both the reasons behind the perpetuationof child MARRIAGE and its harmful impact.

6 The digestprovides guidelines towards ending the practice ofchild MARRIAGE through changing attitudes withinfamilies and societies, expanding opportunities foreducation, offering appropriate support to familiesand children, and working to ensure that all children girls and boys are recognized as valuablemembers of society. The digest deliberately focuseson unions that are recognized as marriages in eitherstatutory or customary when acouple lives together as if married raises the samehuman rights concerns as MARRIAGE . Where a girllives with a man and takes on the role of caregiverfor him, the assumption is often that she has becomean adult woman, even if she has not yet reachedthe age of 18.

7 Additional concerns due to the infor-mality of the relationship for example, inheritance,citizenship and social recognition might make girlsin informal unions vulnerable in different ways thanthose who are in formally recognized , the following study considers girls in bothformal MARRIAGE and in cohabitation to determinerelationships between EARLY unions (within or outsideof MARRIAGE ) and socio-economic and demographicvariables, characteristics of the union, as well asknowledge and access related to reproductive andsexual literature suggests that many factors interact toplace a child at risk of MARRIAGE . Poverty, protectionof girls, family honour and the provision of stabilityduring unstable social periods are suggested byInnocenti as significant factors in determining a girl srisk of becoming married while still a Thornton found little overall change in theaverage age at MARRIAGE for age cohorts bornbetween 1950 and 1970 in most regions, as wellas little change in the incidence of child primarily on Benin, Colombia, India andTurkey, Jenson and Thornton noted strong correla-tions between a woman s age at MARRIAGE and thelevel of education she achieves, the age at whichshe gives birth to her first child and the age of herhusband.

8 women who married at younger ageswere more likely to believe that it is sometimesacceptable for a husband to beat his wife and weremore likely to experience domestic age gap between partners isthought to contribute to these abusive powerdynamics and to increase the risk of untimelywidowhood,6although Westoff notes that olderhusbands may be better providers for Closely related to the issue of child MARRIAGE is theage at which girls become sexually active. Therelationship between age at MARRIAGE and age atfirst sexual intercourse is examined here with an eyeto fertility trends; however, it is important to notethat trends indicate that, while in some countriesmarriage may be increasingly delayed, sexual activi-ty is not, leading to a greater incidence of pregnancyoutside of who are married beforethe age of 18 tend to have more children than thosewho marry later in life.

9 According to Bhattacharya,97 per cent of women surveyed in India in 1992-1993 did not use any contraception before their firstchild was , the Population Counciland UNICEF found that, in Pakistan, a substantialnumber of young married women indicated an inter-est in the use of contraception in the deaths are known to be aleading cause of mortality for both married andunmarried girls between the ages of 15 and 19,particularly among the youngest of this from HIV/AIDS is another reason for childmarriage. Parents seek to marry off their girls toprotect their health and their honour, and men oftenseek younger women as wives as a means to avoidinfection. In some contexts, however, the evidencedoes not support this hypothesis and found that in India, 75 per cent ofpeople living with HIV/AIDS are fact,the demand to reproduce and the stigma associatedwith safe-sex practices lead to very low condomuse among married couples worldwide, and hetero-sexual married women who report monogamoussexual relationships with their husbands are increas-ingly becoming a high-risk group for 2003, UNICEF and partners agreed to focus onfive indicators related to child MARRIAGE .

10 Percentage of women first in union by age 18 byage group (15 19, 20 24 and 45 49) Percentage of girls 15 19 years of age currentlyin union Spousal age difference Percentage of women currently in a polygynousunion by age groups Percentage of ever-married women who weredirectly involved in the choice of their firsthusband or context and indicators related to child marriageand cohabitation can be approached through theexamination of several age groups. One approach isto consider all women in a society. Another wouldbe to observe the situation of girls aged 15 19 todetermine the number of girls currently in union andthe characteristics associated with that age , the possibility of gauging how many ofthose girls will be married or in union by their 18thbirthday is more complex because many have notyet reached the age of 18.