Early/Forced marriage

Jordan: Child Bride in Jordan Puts Daughters on Same Path

Publication Date: 
August 22, 2011
Source: 
Women's E News
Credit: Xavi Talleda on Flickr, under Creative Commons.


What kind of mothers subject their daughters to drudgery, deny them education and threaten them with early marriage and other human rights abuses? The answer, one family's story suggests, are women who've gone through just that themselves.

AMMAN, Jordan (WOMENSENEWS)--Fawzeya, a 70-year-old Palestinian-Jordanian woman living in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, raised her two daughters--now 53 and 47--with an iron hand.

Canada/USA: Investigation of Cross-Border Underage Polygamous Marriages

Publication Date: 
August 9, 2011
Source: 
The Canadian Press
Members of the polygamous community of Bountiful, B.C. walk down a road near Creston, B.C. April 2008. (Photo: Jonathan Hay)


VANCOUVER — The RCMP is preparing to head to Texas to look for more than two dozen brides from Bountiful, B.C., who were allegedly sent across the border as teens to marry older men, including a polygamous leader now facing a life sentence for sexually assaulting two teenage girls.

The Mounties launched a new criminal investigation into Bountiful earlier this year after a constitutional case examining Canada's anti-polygamy law heard allegations of cross-border marriages in the 1990s and early 2000s.

B.C. Supreme Court heard that more than two dozen girls were sent to the United States to marry older men, while several American girls were married to Canadians.

Child Marriage: Videos, Stories, Resources

Publication Date: 
January, 2011
Child Marriage - Resources - TrustLaw


The TrustLaw website has a section which focuses on the issue of child marriage globally: .

Saudi Arabia to set minimum marriage age following surge in such weddings

Publication Date: 
July 25, 2011
Source: 
Al Arabiya
saudi.jpg

Saudi Arabia intends to set a minimum age for girls allowed to marry under a new law intended to curb child marriages following a surge in such a phenomenon in the conservative Gulf Kingdom.

Curbing Child Marriage in Azerbaijan

Publication Date: 
July 18, 2011
Source: 
IWPR
azeri_bride.jpg


Two years after Azerbaijan’s parliament promised tougher laws to prevent underage marriage, it took a police raid to stop a man in his thirties marrying a 13-year-old.

The officers swooped on a beauty salon in the city of Ganja where the marriage was due to take place last month.

The 13-year-old child bride said she was aware that women cannot legally marry until they are 17, but believed the man, 20 years her senior, was an unmissable catch.

Afghanistan: Suspect in Mutilation Case Is Freed

Publication Date: 
July 11, 2011
Source: 
The New York Times
Aisha, a young Afghan woman, whose nose and ears were cut off on orders of the Taliban for running away from a forced marriage.


KABUL, Afghanistan — The only suspect arrested in the case of a woman mutilated for leaving her husband has been released, local Afghan officials and the woman’s father said Monday, in a move that has angered human rights advocates and the woman’s family.

The suspect, Sulaiman, who like many Afghans has one name, was released with the knowledge of the governor in south-central Oruzgan Province, said the provincial attorney, Ghulam Farouq. Police officials had said that Mr. Sulaiman, the woman’s father-in-law, had confessed to taking part in the mutilation in 2009, though Mr. Farouq said he had recently insisted he was innocent.

UK: Teachers urged to be alert to students who may be at risk of forced marriage

Publication Date: 
July 7, 2011
Source: 
Foreign and Commonwealth Office


This summer over 350 young people will be forced to marry someone against their will and as a result may not return to their classrooms next academic year.  

The Forced Marriage Unit (FMU), a joint-initiative between the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and Home Office, is the Government’s specialist ‘one-stop shop’ for forced marriage. It provides support to victims of forced marriage as well as expert training and guidance to professionals working with victims or potential victims.  

India: Child marriages reduced through regional government UNICEF Program

Publication Date: 
June 19, 2011
Source: 
Times of India
India - Child marriages reduced through regional government UNICEF program (2011)


HYDERABAD: Kiran Kumar Reddy may have made for a pretty picture helping a girl child write at a government school in Ameerpet, but it is in the distant revenue division of Adoni in Kurnool district that a real revolution is actually unfolding. Revenue officials here have stopped a whopping 400 child marriages in less than two months.

In a crackdown unseen earlier, officials spearheaded an anti-child marriage campaign along with other government departments and across the 17 mandals of Adoni. The result: this wedding season at Adoni saw fewer child marriages than the previous years.

Ethiopia: Girls fight child marriages

Publication Date: 
June 7, 2011
Source: 
BBC
Ethiopia.


"I wanted to get an education but my parents were determined to marry me off," says Himanot Yehewala, an Ethiopian girl who was married five years ago at the age of 13.

"I tried to run away but my mother said she would kill herself if I did not marry him."

"I was not mature physically or emotionally so it was not easy for me to go and sleep with my husband."

Canada: Videos of Depositions on polygamy

Publication Date: 
June, 2011


Shield and Refuge has provided links to online video of depositions of former Fundamentalists and polygamists who were interviewed by lawyers trying to uphold the anti-polygamy laws in Canada. They are unedited, and so viewer discretion is advised.