WASHINGTON POST: …Niger has the world’s highest rate of child marriage, with roughly one out of two girls marrying before age 15, some as young as 7. As a hunger crisis affects millions here and across the Sahel region of West Africa, aid workers are concerned that struggling parents might marry off their daughters even earlier for the dowries they fetch, including animals and cash, to help the families survive.
“The fear is, if the food crisis continues, that more parents will use marriage as a survival strategy and that we’ll see more girls married before the age of 15,” said Djanabou Mahonde, the head of child protection at UNICEF.
In a landlocked nation that has one of the world’s fastest-growing populations, the hunger crisis is the latest twist in Niger’s efforts to combat early marriages, a battle pitting modern values against centuries-old traditions. Niger’s government has enacted legislation outlawing unions before age 15; in some cases, parents have been arrested and imprisoned. Government social workers and international aid agencies have initiated efforts in remote villages to encourage girls to remain in school… (more)
EDITOR: Tragic but understandable. Better to place a child in a home where it will be fed and cared for than allow the child or his / her siblings to die from starvation or to have to sell the child into a life of prostitution. If this bothers our sensibilities, we should consider contributing more to organizations such as Save the Children and CARE.
