Reportage / Society 30.07.2019

From mother to daughter

When child brides grow and turn into women, their lives are already marked, as is their gaze, harsh and knowing. According to a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, there are currently over 650 million women…

Matteo Bastianelli

When child brides grow and turn into women, their lives are already marked, as is their gaze, harsh and knowing. According to a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, there are currently over 650 million women throughout the world who were given up for marriage as girls. Child marriage often comes with premature pregnancies and births in which the mother’s mortality rate is above average.

Here, she ends up on the streets. When she meets a young man from the Roma community, she believes she will finally find some peace. But it is not to be. She had, once again, fallen into the arms of a man who drank and beat her. So she ran away and met the man she currently lives with.

It’s a transcultural phenomenon, common to people far apart who live in the same poor conditions, such as those within Tirana’s Roma community in Albania. For many families here, such as that of Orkida, giving a daughter away in marriage is a means of survival like any other. Once the girls reach the age of maturity, nearly all of them already have several children to look after while their husbands are in prison. Their eyes are sometimes swollen while torn wedding photographs hang on the wall behind them.

According to a report by Save the Children, the majority of child brides do not receive adequate schooling and professional training opportunities, often having been forced to drop out of school or not been allowed to return as a consequence of the early marriage. It is hard for them to leave the invisible prison they have been confined to since an early age, yet some have succeeded.

L'articolo From mother to daughter proviene da InsideOver.

To the untrained eye, 25-year-old Pepa and her 19-year-old sister, Rosi, are like many millennial girls. They love dressing up, spending a lot of time on social media, and gossiping about boys. Yet, unlike other girls, the sisters have spent their life preparing for one main event that will dictate their future.

Coming from the Kalaidzhi Roma clan in Bulgaria means that every spring, young girls like Pepa and Rosi will be sold off to male suitors at the bride market in the town of Stara Zagora. It is the biggest annual gathering and all-round party for the community of around 18,000 people.

The Kalaidzhi are Orthodox Christian gypsies who have battled with continuous discrimination all over Europe. In years gone by, they were predominantly skilled coppersmiths and lived in the rural areas where they fixed copper pots for a living. Nowadays, demand for their trade has since dwindled, and they face the challenge of economic hardships. In Bulgaria, they are ranked as some of the poorest and as such, they seek unions based on marriages that are financially advantageous.

Pepa and Rosi’s mother, Vera, who was also sold to their father many years earlier with little say in the matter, eventually grew to love her husband over time. These days, she felt that things have changed and girls have a bit more of an opinion when it comes to whom they may end up marrying. In her day, the girls would be lined up on a stage whilst men bid on or competed for their hand. Nowadays, the girls are free to mingle and speak to potential suitors at the market.

In the documentary, Young Virgins as Bulgaria’s Controversial Bride Market, Vera explained how it is imperative that Kalaidzhi girls remain virgins to be able to get the best prices.

“It is very important because a lot of money is given for virginity. If the girl is not a virgin when you sell her, they will call us whores, sluts and disgraceful women,” she said.

Typically, girls are bought for between $290 – $350, but Vera said that she was offered $3500 for Pepa and even more for Rosi.

“I am very happy when boys are bidding a lot of money. This means the girls are beautiful. The boys like them.

The factors, which denote the price of the girl, are purely based on aesthetics – how nice her clothes are, and how pretty she is. The idealised concept of beauty is fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. Because of this, there is a proliferation of cosmetics many girls use to try to appear to have whiter skin.

The documentary’s producer, Milene Larsson, told News: “The bride market is an ancient tradition essential to the Kalaidzhi identity, which is why this custom has survived, but these days most girls have an element of choice — albeit shaped by family pressure — when it comes to whom they wed.”

“That doesn’t by any means justify the disturbing idea that women are property that you can sell, bid on and buy, and how that shapes these girls’ lives from day one. They are brought up not to discover who they are and their ambitions, but instead to obey and serve their future husbands.”

Most of the girls at the bride market are between the ages of 13 and 20. Often times, girls are removed from school since the roles for women tend to predominantly revolve around taking care of the home and the family. Only 10% of Bulgarian Roma women have secondary education, and 1 in 5 women are illiterate.

Peppa and Rosi conceded that they would have preferred to get an education and follow their dreams of becoming a banker and a hairdresser, respectively. But as they had no qualifications and the Kalaidzhi tradition dictates that they are married, they were resigned to their fate.

Larsson found this to be particularly poignant, adding: “I found it especially disturbing when I spent time with them alone and they talked about their fears of being married off to someone they don’t like, missing their families, and their secret dreams and aspirations that they couldn’t pursue.”

L'articolo Bulgaria’s Controversial Bride Market Where Men Buy Teens proviene da InsideOver.

When she was 6-years-old Gabriella Gillespie’s father murdered her mother. At 13, he took her and her sisters to his native country, Yemen, where he sold them as child brides.

Despairing the prospects of marrying the man in his 60s to whom she was promised, Gabriella’s 17-years-old sister, Issy, donned her wedding dress and flung herself off the roof. Issy plunged to her death while unwitting guests continued the festivities.

As told in The Independent, the remaining sisters, who spoke no Arabic, were resigned to living in a remote mountain village – a far cry from any modern comforts, in mud dwellings with no electricity.

In the rural community, girls are married as young as 8-years old; some die on their wedding night while some are horrifically torn. Consummation occurs on a throne swathed in white cloth, after which, the family displays the bloodied fabric like a prized trophy. The girl is well aware of her fate if she does not bleed – she will be returned to her family and murdered, hinging on the belief that she was not a virgin.

Following years of a physically, sexually, emotionally, and mentally abusive marriage, Gabriella eventually fled to the UK with her five children.

Macabre stories like these are not reserved just for those from developing countries. Gabriella is British-born – like her English mother. And according to Unchained At Last, in the US alone, over 200,000 minors have been legally married between 2000 and 2015. The harrowing reality is that 12 million girls are married all around the world every year, which means it is happening to one girl every two seconds.

Rachel Yates, Interim Executive Director at Girls Not Brides, the global partnership to end child marriage said: “Child brides can be found in every region in the world, from the Middle East to Latin America, South Asia to Europe. At its heart, child marriage is rooted in gender inequality and the belief that girls and women are somehow inferior to boys and men. Poverty, lack of education, cultural practices, and insecurity fuel and sustain the practice. These girls are neither physically nor emotionally ready to become wives and mothers. They are usually put under huge pressure to have children before their bodies are ready, and to have lots of them. They face more risks of experiencing dangerous complications in pregnancy and childbirth, contracting HIV/AIDS and suffering domestic violence. It also doesn’t only harm the girls themselves. Research shows that it is costing the world trillions of dollars. If we end child marriage then girls, their families, communities, and countries will all be healthier and wealthier.”

“Caroline” from Kenya told Equality Now, a charity dedicated to improving the human rights of women and girls, that she was just 7-years-old when her mother orchestrated her circumcision in preparation for marriage. The indelible incident proved to be brutal, excruciating, and traumatic.

Soon after, Caroline discovered that her mother had planned to marry her to a man who was aged between 50 and 60. She fled before daybreak one day to a TNI centre, where she was given the opportunity to start rebuilding her life and going to school again.

“In the first instance, there are girls whose families enter into agreements with other families to marry a boy or a man,” Jean-Paul Murunga, a Program Officer from Equality Now explained.

“The next case is where the age of marriage is defined by religion. In Islam, for example, the religious texts state that a girl should marry when she reaches puberty. Because it is such an ambiguous term, there is no clear definition of what age puberty is according to Islam. In places like Sudan where Sharia Law exists, girls are being married between 10 and 12-years-old. You also see a lot of child brides in patriarchal societies. Girls there are viewed as subordinates and need to conform to what men dictate. A lot of times, they are married between the ages of 16 and 18-years old because their parents or guardians give consent. Another major factor is poverty. Poor families can improve their finances by giving the girl away as a bride. When she is younger and a virgin, she is considered to be pure and as such, her dowry will be higher. Families want to give the girl away before puberty due to the concern that if she passes that age, there is a higher chance she will engage in sexual activities, spoil the family name, or affect her dowry price. And the last scenario occurs in countries that experience political conflict where people are being displaced. Families give their daughters away to richer families in the hopes that she will be safe and better off. Yet, the reality is that it opens her to a web of violence, sexual abuse, and child marriage.”

Child marriage remains a complex issue, and there is no silver bullet solution. Experts believe that education is the key – not just academically but also for the extended community of those most affected.

UNICEF published a report earlier this year, which showed some decreases in child marriage around the globe. But unless social norms and gender inequalities are properly addressed, these girls will continue to not receive the 21st century emancipation that they rightfully deserve.

L'articolo 12 Million Underage Girls Married Yearly Worldwide proviene da InsideOver.