The tragic story of children bride in India, tortured by husband and suffering complications during pregnancy

News24xx.com -  According to Girls Not Brides, an umbrella body of civil society outfits fighting to end the practice the rate of child marriage in the northern Indian states of Bihar and Rajasthan varies between 65 and 69 percent. Even at least 12 million girls get married under the age of 18, every year.

According to data that released by the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) released on Tuesday, March 6, 2018 revealed that despite a global decline in child marriage, more than 150 million girls married under the age of 18 by 2030.

Anju Malhotra, UNICEF's main gender advisor, said, "We must to have to collectively multiply efforts to prevent millions of girls from their childhood that stolen through this devastating practice," he said.

"When a girl is forced to marry as a child, she faces immediate and lifelong consequences, the possibility of completing school declines, the possibility of being persecuted by her husband and suffering complications during pregnancy will increase, there is also enormous social consequences, and a higher risk from the intergenerational poverty cycle. "

In India, the decline in child marriages is a result of better education for girls. Current trends show that 27 percent of Indian girls get married before they turn 18, down from 47 percent a decade ago. Data from the 2011 national census showed more than five million Indian girls married before the age of 18, showing limited success of harsh punishment for the crime.

While in South Asia has witnessed the biggest decline in child marriage over the last decade, with the risk of declining from almost 50 percent to 30 percent.

"The decline suggests that it is possible to end child marriages, but girls also need to be empowered, until now child marriage persists because girls are not valued as boys," Lakshmi Sundaram, executive director of Girls Not Brides, who struggled to end child marriage practices, as quoted from Al Jazeera on Wednesday, March 7, 2018.

Child marriage, despite penal offenses, remains widespread in some parts of the country. The legal age to marry in India is 18 for women and 21 for men.

India is a very patriarchal society. Women and men will be killed in villages in northern India if they dare to marry outside their caste.

Cases of illegal abortion of female fetuses and mistreatment of young brides by their in-laws for not fulfilling demands of dowry are also rampant.

 

 

 

 

News24xx.com/dev/red