The family of 15-year-old Pushpo (name changed) struggled hard to make the ends meet but her father sent her to school. She dreamed of pulling her family out of poverty. But the dream fell apart like a house of cards when she was forced into marriage. She now has a 10-month-old baby.
Rabeya’s case was similar. The frail girl was married off at 13 and gave birth to her first child three years later. Numerous others in Kurigram share the same fate.
A teacher at a girls’ school in Kurigram town told this correspondent that 14 out of 47 SSC examinees from his school this year were married. A doctor at Kurigram Sadar Hospital said they admitted many mothers who were in their early teens. Some even gave birth to two or three children before they turned 18.
The legal marriage age for girls is 18 while it is 21 for boys.
Many blame Kurigram’s socio-economic condition for the menace. A recent statistics showed that the district had the highest poverty rate in Bangladesh at 63.7%. Other reasons like lack of social security and job acted as catalysts.
The problem is severe in shoal areas where girls are forced into marriage even before they finish school. Since they are not physically mature, both the mother and child’s lives are at risk during childbirth, said Kurigram Sadar Hospital’s Maternity Ward doctor Marufa Akter Jahan.
A 2014 UNICEF report – Ending Child Marriage: Progress and Prospects – says: “In most cases, child brides are unable to negotiate safer sex, leaving themselves vulnerable to sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, and early pregnancy.”
According to it, Bangladesh has the highest number of girls married off before 15. Over 700 million girls worldwide were victims of child marriage and one in every three of them were married off before 15. In Kurigram, 78% girls under 18 were married.
A pilot project in June 2014 aimed at preventing child marriage in three upazilas of Kurigram – sadar, Rajarhat and Ulipur. The district administration was in charge of implementing the project funded by Service Innovation. But it has been ineffective.
The project identified 72,592 families at the sadar upazila alone who were at the risk of marrying off their underage girls and boys.
When asked about the project, the municipal area’s marriage registrar Nuruzzaman said he had heard about it. “I was not trained and provided with necessary equipment,” he said, adding that parents produced fake birth certificates during marriages.
In shoal areas, poverty, in particular, and lack of awareness drove parents to marry off their children. According to ‘Concern Bangladesh’, about 86% of shoal dwellers live below the poverty line.
Sadar upazila’s Jatrapur Union’s Chairman Abdul Gafur said the situation could have been averted if shoal dwellers had access to higher education.
Terre des hommes Foundation’s Kurigram unit Child Protection Officer Mimi Gomes said 1,595 child brides were receiving services from them at the Bhogdanga Union alone. “Every now and then, young girls come to this union as someone’s bride,” she said.
Several schools in the sadar upazila said about 10 girls on an average were married off each year before finishing studies. The number is particularly high among college students. At Kurigram Government Women’s College, more than 50 married girls, between the age of 16 and 17, enrolled for the 2015-16 session.
When asked the situation, Kurigram Deputy Commissioner Khan Mohammad Nurul Amin said they were holding meetings on the project to prevent child marriage. “We could not give marriage registrars necessary equipment as Wintel Limited is yet to provide mobile phones with the project’s certification software. We are aware about the menace and are trying to raise awareness,” he added.
Social workers said awareness at government and private levels, along with ensuring higher education, social security and works for girls are necessary to prevent child marriage in the region.