WOMEN'S RIGHTS Global effort would combat child marriage

Groups also want to support already-married girls, who are often isolated.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Women's rights advocates and family-policy experts outlined strategies Friday for a global effort to combat child marriage, an age-old practice in many nations with often heartbreaking consequences.
More than 100 million girls under 18 are expected to be married worldwide over the next decade, many of them preteens from developing countries wed involuntarily to much older men, according to organizers of an international conference in Washington.
"When girls are married as children, they are robbed of their childhood, very often denied an education, and their dreams and hopes for life are stolen from them before their very eyes," said Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund.
The plight of such girls "has been neglected because of the perception that their married status ensures them a safe passage to adulthood," Obaid said. "Nothing could be further from the truth."
Health problems
Many young brides die during pregnancy or suffer ruptures during childbirth that can cause lifelong incontinence.
They also are at high risk of HIV infection because their older husbands often have more sexual experience yet rarely use condoms. According to Judith Bruce of the Population Council, studies from Kenya and Zambia indicate HIV is a worse problem among teenage brides than their sexually active, unmarried counterparts.
Obaid said increased publicity about the link with HIV/AIDS would be one effective step in changing local attitudes toward early marriage. She also urged governments in developing countries to work harder to help girls complete secondary school and acquire job-related skills.
Conference organizers said the problems related to child marriage have received little attention in many developed countries, including the United States.
Bill proposal
That could change, if Congress adopts a bill being drafted by Sen. Dick Durban, D-Ill. The measure would establish a new office in the State Department to coordinate U.S. efforts to eliminate child marriage, and would require country-by-country monitoring of the phenomenon as part of the department's annual human rights report.
Among the participants at Friday's conference was Kakenya Ntaiya, who grew up in a Masai village in Kenya and at age 5 was engaged to marry a local boy before she entered her teens.
Ntaiya, now 25, described in detail her struggle -- eventually successful -- to convince her father and village elders that she should instead be allowed to finish high school. She graduated this spring from Randolph-Macon College in Virginia and hopes to return to Kenya after graduate school to assist other young women.
"It was a big challenge to go against the tradition," said Ntaiya, who argued that programs to curtail early marriage would work best if tailored to respect community values and protocol.
That is the thrust of a project being coordinated by several international agencies in Ethiopia, Bangladesh and India, where an array of local civic and religious leaders are being consulted on alternatives to early marriage that would be acceptable in their communities.
In Bangladesh, 75 percent of girls get married before they are 18, and in India 57 percent do so, according to figures compiled for the U.S. government.
Other support
In addition to curtailing early marriages, the U.N. Population Fund and other groups are seeking effective ways to support already-married girls, many of whom are cut off from their own families and have few new friends.
"Many of these girls are still in transition from childhood, and when they get married they get very isolated," said Dr. Laura Laski, an Argentine who heads the population fund's adolescent program.
She praised a new project in Yemen, where young brides gather together under the auspices of the Girl Scouts for sports, indoor activities and the chance to converse about their lives.
The conference on child marriage was held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Global Health Council.