Child marriage is now illegal in Tanzania. The two-year legal battle ended on October 23, when sections 13 and 17 of Tanzania’s Law of Marriage Act were declared “unconstitutional” by the Tanzanian Supreme Court of Appeal.

Before the 2016 ruling, girls aged 14 and above could get married with the consent of a court, and girls aged 15 and above could be married with parental consent. Boys, according to the Law of Marriage Act 1971 are only permitted to get married aged 18 and above.

Thirty-one per cent of girls in Tanzania are married before their 18th birthday. Another two out of five girls are given up for marriage before the age of 15, and almost one in four have their first child before the age of 18. The East African nation has the 11th highest number of child brides in the world.

Dr Agnes Odhiambo, Senior Researcher at the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch said: “This is a victory for the many girls in Tanzania who have been suffering unnecessarily because of government failure to outlaw child marriage.

“The government of Tanzania, for some time, has been sending mixed messages about where it stands on protecting the right of girls.

“It’s also very outrageous for the country’s Attorney General to say that marriage is protecting for girls, where research that we have done… shows that child marriage is very dangerous for girls.”

In 2017, Dr Odhiambho, writing for Human Rights Watch, discussed the discriminatory practices, linked to child marriages which Tanzania’s girls face.

Sexual abuse by teachers is common in Tanzanian schools: girls are often punished when they fall pregnant, while teachers are spared by the law and the community. A 2011 report by UNICEF reveals that one in ten girls in Tanzania experiences sexual violence by a teacher.

“What we have seen when we are on the ground in Tanzania is issues around reproductive health,” Dr Odhiambho continued.

“There is an impact on girls who have to give birth when they are very young. Some of them often die during childbirth, while others develop serious injuries.

“What is also seen [on the ground] is the issue with violence,” she added, explaining that husbands and in-laws of child brides often abuse them physically and psychologically.

“Some girls feel isolated within the family, they feel that they don’t have a lot of friends, causing them a lot of emotional trauma. Some of them, also, are under a lot of domestic violence.

“Some of them are also telling us of being raped in their marriage. They are not ready for the marriage, they are not ready to have sex in marriage, and so their husband forces them to have sex.”

Child marriage is not just a societal problem, but an economic one. The costs of not keeping girls in education further encourages national poverty, because uneducated girls do not generate a big income to the country.

“Ending child marriage could generate benefits worth $5 billion per year by 2030 thanks to lower population growth thereby higher standards of living and lower poverty,” reads a report from the World Bank titled: “The Power of Investing in Girls”.

“The boost for Tanzania’s economy that ending child marriage, preventing early childbearing, and investing in girls’ education would provide would help poverty reduction efforts, as high population growth makes it especially difficult to achieve sustained reductions in poverty over time.”

Quentin Wodon, World Bank lead economist and co-author of the report said: “If women who married as girls had been able to delay their marriage, their annual earnings today could have been higher by more than $600 million. Ending child marriage and educating girls is not only the right thing to do, it is also a smart investment.”

The President of Tanzania, Jon Magufuli, once said that girls who became pregnant would not be allowed back to school, to discourage other schoolgirls from having sex. Under his presidency, schools routinely carry out mandatory pregnancy tests, “a serious infringement of girls’ rights to privacy, equality, and autonomy”, Ellen Martinez, Children’s Rights Division Senior Researcher at Human Rights Watch argued.

The ruling of the Court of Appeal is a great step into safeguarding the political, societal and financial future of millions of girls in Tanzania.

L'articolo Child Marriage Ban Upheld by Tanzania’s Court of Appeal proviene da InsideOver.

Face concealed in a baby blue burka in Afganistan, 23-year-old Miriam’s voice remained even as she told HAWCA.

“My father-in-law was standing near me. He was pressuring me to burn myself. He told me, “Pick up that fuel and stop talking so much”. He kept arguing and yelling at me. My husband was not in the house, so he didn’t hear us fighting. When I threw the fuel on myself, my husband came inside the house. While I was burning I fell unconscious.”

She continued, “When I was in the hospital everyone kept asking me, ‘Why did you burn yourself? You will go to hell for what you did.’ I was praying to God to not let me die. You can let me die from any other pain but don’t let me die from this pain. The moment I started burning, I regretted what I had done.”

At six years old, Miriam’s future was planned. Her father got her engaged and by 11-years-old, she was married. Despite her pleas, her husband’s family refused to let her continue going to school. Frequently beaten and abused by her husband and in-laws, Miriam had come to the end of her tether to a place of no hope.

Yet, Miriam’s story is far from uncommon. In the years gone by, the dramatic suicide method of self-immolation amongst Afghan women has steadily increased. No statistics exist to give a true representation of the number of women who have set themselves on fire; many never make it to the hospital and often, families are too embarrassed or scared of prosecution.

The head nurse at Herat Regional’s Hospital Burn Unit revealed to Mother Jones that in the 13 years employed there, she had witnessed at least a thousand self-immolation cases. Virtually all of them were young women who had experienced domestic abuse, starvation, or forced into violent marriages. Tragically, a large percentage of the women who try to burn themselves die from their injuries.

Afghanistan has endured a long and turbulent history of decades of warfare and dictatorship, which would have impacted in a cataclysmic way on the lives of those there. Having experienced the death of loved ones, a lifetime of traumatising events, human rights violations, and poverty, most Afghans would be left with psychological and emotional wounds.

Nahid Aziz, an associate professor in the Clinical Psychology Programs at Argosy University, Washington, D.C. and a women’s rights activist, said in her report:

“One of the major negative consequences of on-going war is the poor mental health status of Afghans. There are high levels of mental health-related problems in Afghanistan. According to some estimates, as much as 60-80 per cent of the Afghan population suffers from various types of psychological problems, such as depressive disorders, anxiety, and complex trauma. Due to the disabling nature of mental disorders, serious social consequences, including segregation and stigmatization, have become daily realities for many Afghans who are directly impacted and affected by the social consequences.”

Dr. Aziz believes that the rate of self-immolation has increased exponentially among young Afghan women due to serious and chronic mental health problems, which have a direct impact on family function, with an increased risk of domestic violence.

Domestic abuse in Afghanistan is almost normalised, and around 87% of Afghan women have experienced some form of domestic violence in their lifetime. Economically and socially dependent on family members, very rarely do women report an assault. As such, blame is often placed on her when abuse occurs, with the general consensus being that she is either not a good wife or mother. Therefore, abuse at the hands of men is frequently condoned.

Yet, these self-immolation cases are symptomatic of a much greater issue in a country heavily governed by androcentric ideals where violence against women remains rampant and upheld. In UNAMA’s report, just 5% of cases regarding violence against women were adjudicated through criminal prosecution and 65% reached an outcome through non-judicial sources, such as going to a traditional local council or shura where elders – consisting of male ­– will decide the best course of action for the woman.

L'articolo The Women Who Set Themselves On Fire In Afghanistan proviene da InsideOver.

“No one knows how they’ve beaten me. I’ve been crying a lot. They cut my forehead and tried to hang me. When I was pregnant, they tried to drown me in the canal. They hit me a lot and if my son had not been there, they would have killed me and I would be in the grave. They broke both my arms, my leg, and injured my whole body. I have scars all over my body. I have lived with this for 10 years because of my children. I cannot take any more of this. I was almost killed,” Taslima Begum despaired to a group of community leaders in a documentary by Al Jazeera.

She had fled to her parents’ home after enduring years of horrific torture and abuse, because her family had failed to pay the sufficient dowry to her in-laws. After 8 months, her father called for the meeting as he stated he could no longer afford to look after his daughter and her two young children. It was his wish that an arrangement would be made so that his daughter could be returned to husband.

In their native Bangladesh, dowry violence is all too familiar. And in poverty-stricken areas where women’s lower status is marred by their economic and social dependence on men, there is one likely option for Taslima – to be delivered back into the hands of her abusers.

The United Nations defines dowry-related violence as “any act of violence or harassment associated with the giving or receiving of dowry at any time before, during or after the marriage.” Dowries consist of money, presents, goods, or property given from the bride’s family to the groom’s family. The rate is linked to the family’s social status, wealth, and the woman’s looks and education.

One young woman, “Aki Aktar”, kept her face concealed with black cloth, saying that she was too ashamed and frightened to show herself following a horrific acid attack. Tearfully, she recounted how her husband would burn her with cigarettes and demand more money for her dowry. After she left him, he followed her to her mother’s house and dowsed her in acid.

Her body, now disfigured with angry red welts, serves as a daily reminder of the bleak future she must now face. In small villages, women like Aki become the subject of spiteful slander and are often blamed for doing something wrong to provoke such attacks.

Over the years, payment of dowries for marriage has become an even more costly and tumultuous affair. Despite the practice being made illegal in many parts of South Asia, thousands of women still face physical violence, rape, acts of cruelty, and even death, if their dowries are deemed to be insufficient.

In 2012, Pravartika Gupta, a 25-year-old technology graduate in India, died after the bedroom in which she was sleeping in was set on fire. Her 1-year-old daughter, who was with her at the time, also suffered life-threatening burns.

It was revealed that Gupta’s father-in-law and husband had been angry because their dowry demands were not met and also because she gave birth to a girl when a boy was preferred. Her family had agreed to pay the sum of £15,000 plus a Honda car. Yet, the full amount was not received and before long, her in-laws started to demand a new apartment as part of the deal.

“They said they had given a flat to their daughter’s in-laws in dowry and we should do the same. They are economically well-off but greedy,” her uncle, Rajesh Gupta, told the Telegraph.

“We bought gold and clothes for them on the baby’s first birthday but they were not satisfied. A flat would cost between 30 lakhs rupees (£35,000) and a crore (£117,000). They said you got our royal family, you are not as good as we are. You must be proud to be our relatives and you must pay.”

Struggling to deal with the death of his young niece, Gupta echoed the thoughts mirrored by many who find themselves aghast by the callousness of such crimes.

“Why did he do this? He had everything, a beautiful wife, a beautiful girl, a prosperous house. What was in his mind we don’t understand,” asked Gupta.

L'articolo Hundreds Of Women Being Killed For Their Dowries proviene da InsideOver.