Photo Essay: Acting and Chatting to End Early Marriage in Malawi

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Didem Tali

When Malawi passed a law banning child marriage last year, activists applauded it as a significant first step in ending the practice. Now some local groups are using song, theater and dialogue to spread the message and change attitudes towards early marriage.

Malawi has one of the highest rates of early marriage in the world, with one out of every two girls married by the age of 18, according to the umbrella group Girls Not Brides. After immense pressure from activists and grassroots organizations, Malawian President Peter Mutharika signed a bill last year that raised the minimum age of legal marriage from 15 to 18.

The new bill is seen as a significant step toward ending child marriage in the country and has been celebrated by activists and civil society. But according to Faith Phiri, the executive director ofGirls Empowerment Network, a grassroots organization operating to advance girls’ rights in Malawi that operates in Chiradzulu, “The job is far from done.”

The law gives support to those fighting early marriage by giving them the right, for example, to report to the police anyone seen forcing their young daughter to marry. “But solving this issue requires much more than new laws,” says Phiri. “Most importantly, it requires community participation and changes in attitude.”

So activists and local groups are working in rural communities to raise awareness about the new law. In their own ways, they are creating dialogue and spreading the message about the end of child marriage.

A Chief Takes the Law Into Her Own Hands

In Malawi, the tradition of local leadership means village and district chiefs have the final word over the affairs of their community. Decisions regarding marriage and divorce traditionally have to be approved by local authorities, giving village chiefs the power to end child marriages in their communities.

“I made the minimum age of marriage 22 in my own village,” says Ida Alli, the senior chief of Chiradzulu District.

Alli, who was declared a champion of women’s empowerment by former president Joyce Banda, takes pride in making it as hard as possible for people in her village to marry off their daughters. “If I hear rumors that someone might be interested in marrying their daughters off, I personally go to their home, I invite the man’s family, too, and talk to both of the families,” she says. “We talk for hours, and usually for days. I warn them about the dangers of marrying young and the importance of education.”

In the event that talking with the families doesn’t work and a girl needs further protection, Alli invites the girl to live with her at her farm and ensures that she goes to school. The chief also supports vulnerable girls in their efforts to find work and open small businesses.

Alli is aware of the privilege of her position as a traditional leader, and her potential influence on the decisions of her fellow villagers. “In our culture, reputation in one’s community is important,” says Alli. “A lot of people don’t want to do something that is not approved by traditional authorities.”

Fathers and Daughters Open Up

Fathers play a key role in determining whether or not their daughters will get married at a young age, but in patriarchal settings, fathers and daughters rarely have an open dialogue about the issue.

To help family members have honest discussions about early marriage, Girls Empowerment Network got together with community activists and launched Father-Daughter Chat Day. The group regularly runs events that bring together fathers, daughters and other community members to talk about their futures and dreams while they play games, sing and dance.

During one recent Father-Daughter Chat Day, a man held his teenage daughter’s hand and announced, “I promise not to marry my daughter off, and I will support her dreams of becoming a teacher as much as I can.” He then signed a piece of paper and handed it to the village chief as a guarantee that he would keep his promise.

Then the crowd of villagers cheered and applauded as dozens of fathers followed the same ritual, publicly pledging to not marry off their daughters.

Theater and Singing for Those Having Second Thoughts

If the efforts of the village leaders and the father-daughter chats aren’t enough, the girls of Chiradzulu have a secret weapon: Their haunting singing.

Every weeka few local girls aged between 11 and 16 come together after school and compose songs against child marriage. In their most popular song, they ask their communities to support them with their education instead of marrying them off.

“Community theater, music and art have all proven to be great ways for communities to start a dialogue around the issue of child marriage,” says Lakshmi Sundaram, executive director of Girls Not Brides. “They can also help girls and their communities understand and express some of the harmful consequences of the practice.”

Moreen, a 16-year-old community theater actor and an early marriage activist, is sitting on the ground, looking intimidated by the older actor playing her mother-in-law. A child marriage survivor and a mother of two, Moreen recently escaped an abusive marriage that left her HIV positive and moved back in with her family. Now back in school, Moreen is using her passion for theater to get people in her village to understand why girls should wait to get married.

The show stops and one of the actors hands a microphone to a member of the audience to discuss how issues like early marriage or domestic abuse should be tackled. “So, how do you deal with a situation like this at home?” the actors ask the audience, and the crowd starts to buzz with suggestions.

“I don’t want the things that happened to me to happen to other girls,” Moreen says. “Also, acting is a lot of fun.”

Carolyn Miles: Without a Gender Equity Shift We Won’t Reach SDGs

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Flora Bagenal

On International Day of the Girl, Save the Children has released a report detailing the five worst parts of the world to be young and female. Carolyn Miles, CEO of the organization, reveals their plans to ensure a brighter future for young girls in the developing world.

One girl under the age of 15 is married every seven seconds, according to a report published today by Save the Children. Based on indicators such as rates of child marriage, teen pregnancy and the likelihood of dropping out of school, the report also outlines the best and worst places in the world to be a girl. Niger sits at the bottom of the list, closely followed by Chad, Central African Republic, Mali and Somalia. The best place in the world to be a girl? Sweden.

The study, released to coincide with the International Day of the Girl, takes a closer look at the impact of early marriage and early pregnancy on the outcomes of girls’ lives, and calls on the international community to do more to ensure girls in developing countries have the chance to enjoy a childhood.

While the findings of the report once again highlight slow progress on girls’ rights globally, Carolyn Miles, president and CEO of Save the Children, says there is still reason to be optimistic. Real change, she says, is happening in areas where it once seemed impossible. Women & Girls Hub spoke to Miles about setting tough targets for tackling these issues over the next 15 years.

Women & Girls Hub: What has changed for girls’ rights since you started working in this field?

Carolyn Miles: I’ve been working on these issues for a really long time and I think the good thing is that you do see real progress in some countries in terms of the equity for girls. I’ll give you an example. I was in Mali about 18 months ago and I visited a school there. First of all, they had a headmistress not a headmaster, which is fantastic because these girls really need role models. Then when I asked her who the stars of the school were, she said we could go and meet them, and they were three girls. Ten years ago, that would not have been the case in the sixth grade. We would be lucky if there were girls in the sixth grade let alone the star students. So you do see progress and you do see change, but the disparities are still really great, which is what this report is all about.

Women & Girls Hub: What do you find most frustrating about the lack of progress for young girls?

Miles: I guess what’s disappointing is that a lot of it is not about policy. I was just in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has a policy that no girls get married under the age of 18, and yet a third of girls get married before they are 18. So obviously this isn’t about policies.

A lot of the time it is about changing behavior and it’s about convincing families to value girls as highly as they value boys. That’s why one of the things we looked at in this study is women in the highest level of government. Women in those position are more likely to change policy, but they are also role models, so families see women can be leaders, and that starts to change the way people value girls.

We’re not just trying to name and shame countries for this report – we show the report to the countries in the worst position in advance of publishing it. But what we want is to work with these countries to change the situation.

Women & Girls Hub: What can Save the Children and other international organizations do to improve things for the girls featured in this report?

Miles: We have set our sights really high for children by 2030. We want no child under five to die of preventable disease. Every child should be in school and get a basic education, and we want to change the way the world thinks about violence against children. If you look at those goals, the only way we are going to get there is if we look at the children who are worst off in all those places. The children who are worst off in health, in education and in protection. Girls are at the end of the line on most of those issues.

Women & Girls Hub: Do you think global attitudes toward girls are changing?

Miles: I do. I think a big turning point, if you look at the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), the issue of equity is a huge part of it, specifically about gender. Not only is there a specific goal about gender, but in all those 17 goals there is a huge amount of work around equity and a big recognition that, if we don’t get a gender equity shift, we will never reach any of those goals.

Women & Girls Hub: Can it get depressing when you find yourself facing such hugely ambitious targets?

Miles: I think the only way you can approach this job is looking at the glass as if it is half full. If you look at child survival, to me that is one of the most exciting pieces of progress we have made. In 1990, you had 12 million kids who died of preventable diseases and now you have under 6 million. That’s 25 years; that’s in our lifetime.

So why not be ambitious and say, if we can do that in 25 years then we can save the last 6 million in 15 years? We know exactly where those kids live, we know what they are dying of. It’s not about not knowing; it is about changing behavior. [Changing attitudes toward girls] is really hard because it is getting to the core of people’s beliefs and changing the way people think. It’s not easy to do and it will take some time, but things are changing and we have to hold on to that.

The names of the girls in the photos have been changed to protect their identities.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Kudos and a Curse: Meet the Savior of Girls in Samburu

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Hannah McNeish

Josephine Kulea has saved over 1,000 girls in Kenya from forced marriage and the female genital mutilation that usually precedes it. Her work has earned praise from Barack Obama, but she says politicians back home won't support her work in case it loses them votes.

NAIROBI, Kenya – Her face has been plastered across billboards in New York and London and she was lauded by U.S. President Barack Obama on his visit to Kenya. But Josephine Kulea sees herself as still very much a grassroots activist. She works with communities in the area where she grew up, saving girls as young as seven from forced marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM) and either being pulled out of school or never getting the chance to go. Despite national laws banning child marriage and FGM, in Samburu culture, girls can be matched to men old enough to be their grandparents, and polygamy is common.

Once cursed to death by her family for breaking up a marriage between her uncle and a seven-year-old cousin, Kulea, 30, now runs the charity The Samburu Girls Foundation, which, to date, has stopped over 1,000 girls across four counties from marrying young and missing their education. Women & Girls Hub spoke to her about how it all started with her mother and why she became the target of a death curse.

Women & Girls Hub: How did you start helping girls?

Josephine Kulea: I was following in my mom’s footsteps. My mom also fights for girls to go to school within my community because she was taken out of high school to become my dad’s third wife.

Women & Girls Hub: What about your childhood?

Kulea: I finished school but every holiday when I came home there was a new [potential] husband who wanted to marry me. My uncles wanted to marry me off because my dad passed away when I was young. Everyone was over 45 or in their 50s. I was 12, 13, 14, 15. But my mom fought for me.

After I finished school I went to nursing college and came back to work in my village. The first two girls I rescued were my own cousins. The first was a 10-year-old who was supposed to be getting married. Then two days later I got a call to say the same man, my uncle, was going to marry the youngest girl in the family who was just seven years old. She had to go through FGM on the day of the wedding. She got married and two days later we went to get her and arrest my uncle, and that became history in my village. They even had a big meeting to curse me [to death] because it was considered a very bad thing to do.

Women & Girls Hub: How did you feel when you heard about the curse?

Kulea: I knew I was not in the wrong because I was just protecting child rights. I continued getting calls from women from the same village to rescue more girls. I paid their fees with my nursing salary. It was less than $200 a month. I spent almost everything [on the girls’ education] because you have to buy uniforms and books and pens.

Women & Girls Hub: How did the Samburu Girls Foundation come about?

Kulea: In 2012 we started the organization, registering it and making it official like an NGO, so now we can ask people for money. We are now reaching out to four counties – Samburu, Marsabit, Isiolo and Laikipia. The community has donated 15 acres of land. That’s where our girls stay, we have a dormitory and dining room. Safaricom [Kenya’s largest mobile phone company] is coming to build us classrooms soon and we hope to eventually have a fully fledged school because we’re spending a lot of money on taking these girls to schools across the country.

Women & Girls Hub: How many girls have you helped?

Kulea: We’ve rescued over 1,000 girls. We have 300 girls who are directly under our organizational support. When we rescue these girls, the families normally are bitter because they are missing out on the dowry. It is sometimes up to one year until the girls are accepted back [by their families]. We talk to the parents and counsel them and the girls. Eventually we reunite them. Some parents lie to us. They really want to marry them off again, so we tell the girls that they can always come back to us, they can call us and also they become our eyes in the village and they make sure their own sisters, cousins and neighbors are not going through the same thing.

Women & Girls Hub: Is there any sign parents are starting to value educating girls?

Kulea: The problem we have is the villages in these areas have been marginalized for so long. The illiteracy levels are so high: In Samburu county it’s 80 percent. Such communities have yet to understand the value of educating girls.

Women & Girls Hub: The culture of ‘beading’ – when men give young girls beads to “book” them for sex – is this changing?

Kulea: It is dying out around the cities because more people there have embraced education. But there are a few other areas where it is still very common and as much as we try to spread awareness that it’s wrong, people feel it’s still part of our culture. Some girls feel it makes them beautiful because someone has given them these beads.

Women & Girls Hub: What was it like getting mentioned by Obama?

Kulea: It was awesome! It felt nice because sometimes you work so hard, do a lot of work and you think you’re hidden in the bush and no one notices. We are yet to get those shout-outs from the local or county government.

Girl under 15 married every seven seconds, says Save the Children - BBC News

A new study by Save the Children; an international nongovernmental organization promoting children's rights; paints a bleak picture for many girls, especially those in areas hit by conflict or other crises. 

The study also studies girls' situations around the world, explores ways to empower and give voices to girls, examines the importance of sexual and reproductive health services and more.

Read more below and at the link, or read the Save the Children study.

bbc.co.uk - One girl under the age of 15 is married every seven seconds, according to a new report by Save the Children.

The study says girls as young as 10 are forced to marry much older men in countries including Afghanistan, Yemen, India and Somalia.

Save the Children says early marriage can trigger a cycle of disadvantage across every part of a girl's life.

Conflict, poverty and humanitarian crises are seen as major factors that leave girls exposed to child marriage.

"Child marriage starts a cycle of disadvantage that denies girls the most basic rights to learn, develop and be children," said Save the Children International CEO Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

"Girls who marry too early often can't attend school, and are more likely to face domestic violence, abuse and rape. They fall pregnant and are exposed to STIs (sexually transmitted infections) including HIV."

The report, called Every Last Girl, ranks countries based on the hardest place to be a girl based on schooling, child marriage, teen pregnancy, maternal deaths and the number of women in parliament.

Chad, Niger, Central African Republic, Mali and Somalia were ranked at the bottom of the index.

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This 15-year-old Syrian is creating a revolution in a refugee camp, the Malala way - HerStory

We were so moved by the story of 15-year-old activist and Syrian refugee Omaima Hoshan, who began looking into the issue of child marriage after 12- and 13-year-old classmates left school to marry, and was moved by the courage and work of Malala Yousafzai. Hoshan now leads workshops for teenage girls and their families, working to encourage education instead of child marriage.

It's an issue that desperately needs attention: According to a UNICEF report, more than 700 million women worldwide were married before turning 18

Read the rest of Hoshan's story at the link. You can also watch her speak about why the issue is so important to her in a video by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

her.yourstory.com - Syria born Omaima Hoshan was 11-years-old when the war in Syria forced her to flee to Jordan with her family. The Hoshans left Damascus in 2012 and sought refuge at the Zaatari refugee camp — one of the largest in the world. Her main concern when she arrived at Zaatari was to resume her education and make new friends in the camp.

In a report by The Huffington Post, in the classroom, she discovered a troubling trend. “When I got to sixth grade, I started hearing about girls as young as 12 or 13 getting married. They would come to the school to say goodbye,” the now 15- year-old, told visitors from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), a United Nations refugee agency, in April. “I remember thinking that they were making a big mistake,” she added.

When one of her closest friends, Basma (whose real name has been changed), told her that she was to be married at the age of 14, Omaima’s outrage reached new heights, and propelled her into action. Osmaima vowed that she wouldn’t let herself suffer the same fate — and she would try everything in her power to stop more child marriages from taking place in the camp.

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Girl summit to focus on child nuptials

For millions of girls around the world, marriage isn't something they daydream about--it's a nightmare. An estimated 7 million girls worldwide are married at an early age, robbing them of their freedom of choice, an education, and a childhood. The Girl Child Summit on March 23 in Kathmandu, Nepal will bring together activists and children from the region to continue addressing the issue and working toward the goal of ending child marriage by 2030--a target set two years ago at the first Girl Child Summit held in London.

kathmandupost.ekantipur.com - Mar 21, 2016- The Girl Child Summit begins on Wednesday with focus on combating child marriage, contributing to the government’s move to end child-, early- and forceful marriages by 2030.

The Ministry of Women Children and Social Welfare, with support from UNICEF and the DFID, is hosting the summit in Kathmandu, where around 60 children from Nepal’s 15 districts where child marriage is prevalent will present their views on the practice.

Morang, Saptari, Udayapur, Makwanpur, Rautahat, Kapilvastu, Rupandehi, Nawalparasi, Kalikot, Banke, Dailekh, Surkhet, Bajhang, Baitadi and Doti are the 15 districts with high prevalence of child marriage. The 60 children who will attend the summit have already held district consultations and pre-event workshops.

“Experience tells us that formulating law alone is not enough to wipe out this harmful practice. We can do it only by changing the social perception and we hope this summit will go a long way in helping us fulfill our commitment to ending child marriage by 2030,” said Shankar Prasad Pathak, acting secretary at the ministry.

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