Second Chance for a Would-Be Child Bride

By Chris Niles. Rajasthan, India.

Babalu was 13 when her community decided she should be married. “I thought my life would be completely ruined,” she said.

Child marriage is illegal in India, but in poor regions there is enormous social and economic pressure to defy the law. More than half of girls here are married by age 18 – often setting up a lifetime of health and social problems for these young women and their children.

Babalu had watched her elder sister’s health deteriorate from multiple pregnancies after being married off at age 13, and was opposed to repeating her sister’s fate.

‘A disempowered girl’

Child marriage is against child rights,” said UNICEF Child Protection Specialist Sulagna Roy. “It influences children’s and mother’s health. It continues a cycle of poverty. It leaves a disempowered girl.”

UNICEF and the European Commission are giving strength to families who decide not to marry their daughters young.

UNICEF encourages community meetings, where villagers discuss issues such as domestic violence and girls’ education, to find ways to end harmful social practices. The programme encourages communities to realize that everyone benefits when girls stay in school and delay marriage.

“We are not here to lecture but to support [communities] in finding solutions to these problems,” said European Commission Representative to India Daniele Smadja.

Through such discussions, Babalu's father became convinced that it was in his family’s best interest to let Babalu continue her studies.

Saving others from early marriage

Babalu is grateful for her father’s change of heart. She says she would have killed herself if she had been forced to marry. She is now determined to stay in school, and says “I want to become somebody.”

Her example has already inspired wider change. Hearing about Bablu, five girls in nearby villages stopped their own marriages.

It is hard to know the exact number of child marriages as so many are unregistered and unofficial. This said, survey data is available for around 100 countries and it showed that in developing countries, more than 60 million women aged 20-24 were married/in union before the age of 18.

Research proves that if a girl is educated she is less likely to end up in a child marriage. Give Gifts of Education to help educate and protect children like Babalu.