AFGHANISTAN: Child marriage rate still high - minister

Photo: World Vision\James East

Marrying off daughters as young as ten remains common in rural Afghanistan

KABUL, 13 July 2004 (IRIN) - A high proportion of marriages in Afghanistan involve girls below the legal age, according to reports from the Ministry of Women's Affairs and NGOs. As many as 57 percent involve young women under 16, some of them as young as nine. "Child marriage is a serious issue in Afghanistan because it has a very negative impact on society," Dr Suraya Subehrang, deputy minister of women's affairs, told IRIN in the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday. Subehrang explained that such marriages increased the maternal mortality rate and denied many young women the chance to get an education. Often, after a child marriage, husbands and/or parents-in-law refuse to allow the child-wife to go to school under threat of violence. According to Afghanistan's new constitution, the minimum age of marriage for females is 16 and for males 18, but in rural and even some urban areas the tradition of marrying off daughters while young in order to receive money remains common among the poor. It is precisely this issue that Medica Mondiale, an International NGO supported by the German government, and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), working to support traumatised young women in crisis zones, are involved in. "Child marriage affects girls badly in many ways. It blocks them from education and any possibility of independent work," Rachel Wareham, Medica Mondiale's head of mission, told IRIN. She said that it also often subjected them to repeated pregnancy and childbirth before they had reached physical maturity, which often produced serious physical trauma, psychological disturbance and sometimes lifelong physical and emotional damage. The maternal mortality rate is very high in Afghanistan, according to data from the United Nations Population Fund in Afghanistan (UNFPA). Every hour, two women die while giving birth - the highest maternal mortality rate in Asia. "Maternal mortality is partly linked to a lack of trained medical professionals, but it is also very clearly linked to girls who are giving birth when they are not yet ready." Wareham noted.