Every year there are 5 million girls married under the age of 15. Child Marriage exists
around the world. In South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa.
It's across regions, it's across cultures, it's across religions. Child is an abuse of
human rights. Girls are married at an age in which they are supposed to be in school.
They are supposed to be protected. And they are called to be playing roles of adults,
and they are girls. When I was 8 years old and my sister was 10 years old, my uncle came
to our grandfather's place and he told him, I think now these girls are big enough for
circumcision. So, you know, you first have to be circumcised for you to get married.
We managed to escape for the first time. And then, my uncle came. We were beaten and all
that and then we had to tell him, uncle we promise that next time we are not going to
run away. These children who have to sleep with old men, don't even know what they're
going to be doing in bed. And it is vicious.Traditionally, culturally, it is accepted, especially in
the rural areas. And also because of poverty. Poverty is the main reason for early marriage.
When the family is very poor and they have many children, boys and girls, they prefer
to send some of the female from the house to another family.For the individual girl,
it can be a time when her life changes dramatically. But when you magnify that across a whole country,
you can see the impact it has at a macro level. When girls are marrying below the age of 15,
they are interrupting their education too soon, they are reducing their economic potential
in perpetuity, they are at much greater risk of dying in childbirth, of their infant dying
in the first year of life, and are going to experience higher lifetime fertility and greater
rates of poverty, that magnified across the country really perpetuates a cycle of poverty
for these countries. Issues related to human security, issues like
child marriage, are simply not soft issues. They are issues that can affect the stability
of countries, they are issues that can affect the economic development of these countries.
They are every bit as dangerous as wars over natural resources or wars that result from
cultural differences. We as a global community not only have a moral interest in protecting
young girls in particular but we have our own security interest at heart.
If you care about economic development, you care about investing in women in girls, you
care about reducing maternal mortality and infant mortality, you have to look at child
marriage as a driver of all of these things. The evidence shows us, and common sense would
show us as well, that education can delay and even prevent child marriage. It can raise
incomes and it certainly can improve health. (4:30)There are a number of ways that the
international community has sought in the past to address isues like child marriage.
Frequently, we adopt sanctions. We've also seen situations where we try to name and shame.
In other situations we try to address it through general economic development approaches, through
girls' empowerment and girls' education. And then there are other situations where you
want to act with local actors, whether those are legislators or government officials or
traditional leaders. And what we've found all around the world is that empowering those
individuals within their own societies who can speak to their counter parts has been
by far the most effective approach. You don't just empower them by telling them
this is bad. (5:19)You need to target decision makers, what we call the cultural elders.
We need to involve the young men because they are the future husbands of these girls, they
are the ones who are marrying them. Everyone needs to get informed, and let the decision
come from them. (5:40) it is not a disease, child marriage.
It's a social condition. We are not talking about Polio, here. We are talking about social
engineering that will require many, many things in place to really eradicate this. I think
that it can be done within a generation. (6:05) The issue of child marriage has been
elevated in recent years both in terms of U.S. foreign policy and on the world stage.
And at the country level I think we are also seeing signs of progress. So for example,
take a country like Ethiopia where you have a government that has actually committed to
addressing this issue. (6:29) One day, if I get a girl, I think she's
really going to enjoy all the rights I didn't enjoy. She's going to go to school, definitely
she's not going to get circumcised, she's not going to get married. Well, if she wants
to get married it's fine, if she doesn't want to get married, that's it. I can't really
force her. She's going to decide for herself what she wants.