CHILD Protection & Rights > Child Protection Issues.

What are the reasons for Child Marriage?

Some reasons for Child Marriage include:
• Illiteracy and lack of education.
• Gender discrimination and unequal status of women.
• Traditions and customs.
• Economic necessity and reasons, eg. higher dowry needs to be given to daughters when they are married at a later age.
• Strategy for families to maintain or ensure social, economic or political ties.
• Strategy for families to avoid pregnancy outside marriage
• Strategy for families to provide male guardianship for their daughters and protect them from sexual assault
• Strategy for families to ensure obedience and subservience within their husband’s household
• Lacunae and shortcomings in the existing laws.
• Lack of protective environment for a young girl.
• Lack of administrative will and action.

What is the impact of Child Marriage on children?
Child Marriage is a violation of human rights. It forces children to assume responsibilities and handle situations for which they are often physically and psychologically unprepared. It can have serious harmful consequences for children, including:

- Abuse - including physical, emotional and sexual. This is common in Child Marriages. In addition, children who refuse to marry or who choose a marriage partner against the wishes of their parents are often punished or even killed by their families.

- Health problems. These include premature pregnancies that cause higher rates of maternal and infant mortality. Most girls enter marriage with little or no information about their reproductive health, including contraception, safe motherhood, and sexually transmitted diseases. Because they cannot abstain from sex or insist on condom use, child brides are often exposed to such serious health risks as premature pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and, increasingly, HIV and AIDS.

- Denial of girl’s education: Once married, girls tend not to go to school and so they lose out on the benefits of education: better health, lower fertility, and increased economic productivity. They also lose out on any form of sexuality education, which is rarely taught before secondary school.

- Separation from families and friends.

- Lack of freedom to interact with peers and participate in community activities.

- Involvement in bonded labour such as domestic slavery.

In places where child marriage is practiced, girls rarely have any say in when and whom they marry. Once married, these young girls have little power and limited autonomy. Girls are frequently much younger than their spouses, and the younger a girl's age at marriage, the greater the age difference between her and her husband.

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