Displaying items by tag: child brides

Radio 4 reported that police and border control are once again going to run Operation Limelight at major airports to prevent children being taken abroad for female genital mutilation (FGM) or arranged marriages. Officers will be speaking to airline and airport personnel to raise awareness, and advise what signs to look for on outbound flights to countries where FGM and child marriage are prevalent. In school holidays families take girls abroad. The girls believe they are going on a family holiday and are unaware of what is about to happen to them. Research shows that 90% of police, health and social care professionals have not received training around these issues and did not feel confident in managing the safeguarding aspect of FGM or how to address cultural sensitivity and barriers.

In the US you can marry at 12 but can't drink beer until 21. Keri met Paul, 24, at a party on her 15th birthday. They slept together just once - and Keri became pregnant. Paul asked her to marry him so that he didn’t go to jail for statutory rape. Her father's consent was needed; he gave it. Keri couldn’t finish school, and later described her marriage as horrible, with Paul treating her ‘like a maid’. Making even small legal changes on this issue is a slow, hard-won process. On 29 January, the senate in South Carolina passed a bill to end child marriage. 17 American states still have no legal minimum age for marriage if a child is pregnant and has consent from a judge or family member. So 12-year-olds continue to be legally wed to men much older than they are - if they’re pregnant.

A Muslim man recently told a Turkish ministry leader, ‘In a few weeks I’m going to go down to the refugee camps. I have a friend who bought a young Syrian girl to be his second wife; I am going to go and pick one for myself.’ The leader replied, ‘I’m very sad that you would want to buy a little girl as a slave and take advantage of these poor people who are just trying to survive.’ It’s too dangerous for most Syrian refugees to return home, even if they have homes to return to after seven years of war. Mothers in refugee camps are grief-stricken when criminals steal and sell their daughters. The refugees are aware that it is Muslims who are buying their daughters, and that Christians are the ones bringing them compassionate aid of food and blankets. Recently a worker was asked by a Muslim refugee, ‘Please pray for us!’

The Co-operative Academy of Leeds has been working with human rights charity Karma Nirvana to end forced marriages and honour-based abuse. In school education lessons, students were given spoons which they could use if they feared they were being taken abroad to be married in the summer holidays. If they concealed them in their underwear, the spoons would trigger airport metal detectors, and the child would be taken to one side to be searched away from their parent or guardian. This would allow the youngster to tell airport staff that they were being forced into a marriage. Karma Nirvana’s helpline has taken nearly 70,000 calls in ten years. It has worked with the academy for five years, teaching pupils and staff how to be aware of this problem and how to get help if they are affected. See https://www.karmanirvana.org.uk/what-we-do/raising-awareness-education/

The BBC’s America First series reported on Angel, who was 13 when her mother forced her to marry and start a family. ‘I felt like a slave,’ she says of her childhood. Zimbabwe, Malawi and El Salvador have recently banned child marriage, but it remains legal in the USA - and half of states have no set minimum age below which you cannot get married. Recently the Independent reported that in the last fifteen years, more than 200,000 children were married in the USA. The minimum age for marriage is usually 18, but there are exemptions - such as parental consent or pregnancy - which allow younger children, sometimes as young as ten, to tie the knot. See