At the NoVo Foundation, we know that prioritizing girls and women is one of the most fundamentally sound methods of changing our world for the better. We've learned that helping girls and women help themselves raises living standards for everyone.
Each year a girl stays in school boosts her future income by 10 to 20 percent. And since girls and women are likely to invest 90 percent of their income in their families -- as opposed to a man's 30 to 40 percent -- the education and empowerment of girls and women has an impact that ripples across a society.
So what happens to girls early in their life makes a huge difference. On a learning trip to Ethiopia, where 49 percent of girls are married before they are 18, I came face to face with one of the biggest challenges that holds back the world's female population and keeps countries mired in poverty: child marriage.
Speaking with a group of Ethiopian girls, I got a lifetime's education in a single afternoon. I sat and listened as girl after girl described to me how they had become the wives of much older men. One woman told me she fled after being told she was going to be married at the age of four! She ran away crying in terror and heartbreak, only to return to her village after realizing she had no options whatsoever.
All of these girls had been forced to leave school in favor of working in their in-laws' homes and bearing children while still children themselves. And none of these girls had wanted this fate. They all had hoped to go to school and grow up with their friends and families.
Little was being done on an international level to recognize -- much less halt -- this practice, which violates the human rights of girls in many ways. So when The Elders, a group of eminent global leaders, established a global campaign to end child marriage in a generation, NoVo offered early support for the initiative, along with the Nike Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
The campaign, Girls Not Brides, will recruit non-governmental organizations, as well as governments, the private sector, and individuals around the world to work for a day when no girl is married before the age of 18 and to raise the profile of the issue. We announced the launch of the initiative this week at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York City.
The campaign will be global in scope and assertive in nature to meet this enormous problem head-on. Despite the limited publicity about it, child marriage is not an isolated or uncommon practice. It is in fact so widespread as to be commonplace in many parts of the world. Studies estimate that one-third of underage girls in the developing world are married, 10 million new brides joining their ranks every year. In Niger, the country in which child marriage is most common, fully three-quarters of girls under 18 are wives.
Child marriage amounts to a socially sanctioned method of abduction and rape. Forcing any person -- not to mention an underage girl -- into marriage violates the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the nearly universally ratified UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Child marriage also violates girls' basic rights to health, education, and security.
Girls in marriages instead of in school are not able to learn skills that could help them pull their families from poverty or provide them some measure of independence. Their health is put in danger: Girls under 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their twenties, and those 15 to 19 are twice as likely to die. With virtually no power to reject unwanted sex, child brides are more likely to contract HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases than unmarried, sexually active girls the same age. Sexual violence and domestic servitude are part and parcel of life for child brides.
We all are accountable for what is happening to these girls, who are sometimes as young as four years old when they are wed. Unless we take action, we are consciously forfeiting our responsibility for many of the most vulnerable people on Earth.
We must end this practice now. And we can.
We can go about this work by empowering local activists who are already making change, promoting transformation on the community level. There are passionate and dedicated people around the world who have been struggling against this practice for years. Our role will be to support and enable their efforts, and to raise consciousness on what they are doing and why.
Some object to our intentions by saying that child marriage is an issue of tradition, culture, or religion, and therefore must continue as it always has. But none of the world's major religions support this practice. And while traditions are vital to nations in many ways, they are not set in stone. "People may say it is tradition, it cannot change," says Mozambican social and political activist Graça Machel of The Elders. "But I know it is not true. Traditions can change because they are made by people."
Together we can take on the important work of transforming traditions to embrace empowerment, equality, opportunity, and kindness, instead of domination, restriction, and exploitation. We can give these girls -- and their societies -- a better future. We can end child marriage in a generation. Please join us.
Among her arguments was pointing out that the barely-pubescent are twice as likely to die in childbirth as late teens are and that such early marriage prevents them from completing school which in turns limits the education they can provide to their own children, should they survive the child bearing process.
She also noted that children are very easy to bully, manipulate, and abuse by adults as they have a child's desire to please and desire for adult approval. Since these are mostly married to adult males ... well lets just say that their sexuality is definitely not their own and they have no power to force their husbands to wait till they are physically developed enough to reduce the dangers of pregnancy.
These are not cultural judgements. These are simple facts.
It is a much more attractive and mystical effort for some to want to change behavior and practice in other parts of the world but inner urban NY, Chicago, South Central, Little Rock, Atlanta....................................
Those places are too close to home, to easy to access, and do not involve the remote travel that some want to engate in as part of their efforts to change parts of the world they see as in need of change.
Perhaps it sd. be considered that part of the reason this country is at war is due the US impossing their economics and cultures on parts of the world that do not want Western culture and influence. Who are You or I to say that it is our business to tell Africans at what age they sd marry ? I may find their culture and practive disturbing but who am I to say.I also find the practices of certain communities in the US to be distrubing as well.
It is a noble effort and good luck but find it a safe bet that in twenty years things will not have changed one bit.
"And since girls and women are likely to invest 90 percent of their income in their families -- as opposed to a man's 30 to 40 percent --"
On that issue I call you a liar or at the least a severe distorter of facts. These poor people could not keep their families alive on 30 to 40% of their income anymore more than the average man in America supporting a family. How can they be one of the poorest nations on earth and have men splurging large amounts of disposable income on things other than housing and food for their families. I suppose your studies assume men buying seed for crops, or tools to work the land are not contributions toward his family.
I think the anti male attitudes need to be the global standard. The radical feminist elements need to go if you want my support. I am all for women having better lives but trashing men in general and disregarding their contributions to the society does not need to be apart of the process. You can promote the welfare of women without degrading men.
Second- I agree those statistics seem inaccurate but I dont think they in any way 'trash' or 'degrade' men. In fact I couldnt see anything about this article that even remotely could be considered 'anti male. I didnt even detect the radical feminist elements.
Your skin must be absolutely translucent to have felt so personally attacked as a man.
Im in total agreement on the most serious issue in this article; that child marriages must end and not to promote the wests ways but to save these poor girls from a living hell. They hate their lives, what little they have.
It's not about me being attacked as a man, it's about attacking men in general. I don't support a culture that continuously goes out of it's way to find ways to vilify the male gender. There is no mention of the good men that support and protect their families whom are the norm. We should not encourage writing men off as useless and unwilling to support their families. Their social role is real and relevant and it should be respected.
I could argue that the US doesn't have enough child marriage. We have a significant childbearing rate by teenage girls now. We had it in the past as well, but in the past most of the teenage mothers married before giving birth. Now the divorce rate of teenage marriages is very high now, but the lack of stable jobs for teenage men is reducing their value as husbands.
My mother was 19 when she married, and a sister-in-law was 17. Both graduated from college. My mother in the US, my sister in law in the Ukraine.
Who the hell came up with his lie? And if people want to get married at a young age, let them.
Clean up our own mess before we start telling other countries what to do. In Texas there is the YFZ branch,one in Colorado City, AZ, another and in Hildale, UT even more - and in other US states, too.
For the better?
Yay America! Go, Team, Go!
Change the whole world to be just like you.
As if there weren't enough critical issues right here at home to deal with before we try changing other cultures to reflect our "values".