Posted by Rutgers WPF on Thursday, March 5, 2015
HYDERABAD, Pakistan (News Lens Pakistan) -- A campaign to discourage adolescent marriage in rural southern Pakistan has adopted an unusual approach to drive home the perils: peer pressure.
A group of 460 teenage girls have reached out to more than 9,000 peers since the "She Leads" program began 12 months ago in Sanghar district in the center of Sindh province, and Malir, a district on the edge of Sindh's capital, Karachi.
The program is the creation of Rutgers-WPF, a Netherlands-based organization working on sexual and reproductive health rights.
The girls are students from six schools in Sanghar, 170 miles north of Karachi, and three in Malir. Accompanied by 30 teachers from their schools, they have visited at least 100 homes.
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Malir is mainly inhabited by conservative Baloch and Pashto ethnic groups. Many residents have very rigid and conservative social views, including opposition to polio vaccinations.
"The marriage of a pubescent girl, who is still growing both mentally and physically, stops her education and limits her access to health and nutrition," Rutgers-WPF country representative Qadeer Baig told News Lens Pakistan.
"They have to go through child-bearing when their own bodies are in need of nutrition. We decided to train girls of the affected age group, and give them a voice, so they could reach out to their families and persuade them against the custom," he said.
For the project, 10 to 20 girls from each of the nine government schools in Sanghar and Malir were picked for training. So far, 460 girls have been trained.
"The girls are not only educated about the dangers of child marriage but are also taught leadership skills so they can speak up and be able to influence others in their neighborhoods," he said. "To help them, we also simultaneously train teachers so they can help, guide and protect the girls when needed."
Child-bearing by undereducated girls in their early teens contributes to the cycle of high maternal and infant mortality, said Dr. Yasmeen Qazi, senior country adviser for the population program of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation: "http://www.packard.org" target="_blank"}, which funds the training program.
"When the girls are married early, it limits the choices available to them about their own bodies, let alone receiving education," Qazi told News Lens. "Patriarchal traditions in Pakistan ensure that the girls are seldom in a position to make choices about their health. They also remain uneducated and end up making bad decisions for their own health and their babies' health, which contributes to the cycle of high maternal and infant mortality."
One in 4 girls in Pakistan is married before her 18th birthday, according to a 2012 U.N. Population Fund profile. The rate is highest in Sindh province, at 33 percent.
Parents say that as their daughters get older, they will have to raise her dowry and they cannot afford it. Tradition plays an important role, too, as many mothers also married early.
"What is the point of educating my daughter if I can barely manage to afford my son's education?" asked Kareem Bughio, who lives 125 miles from Karachi. "It is better if she married off early. How will I collect her dowry? If she is more educated than her husband then she will become headstrong."
Hailing from a Pashtun family, Sabrunnissa Gaffar, 16, from Government Girls High School in Malir, is familiar with the effects of early marriages.
Her late mother had been married shortly after reaching puberty, which harmed her health. She had given birth to two stillborn babies before dying.
Last year Sabrunnissa heard that a friend, Sadia, was to get married.
"I went to her house and tried to explain that child-bearing was not a job suited to a 15-year-old. I told them about my mother and what happened to her. Once Sadia's parents understood this they decided to delay her marriage till she was older."
Aftab Ahmed of Rutgers-WPF, who led the training program in Sanghar, said that by training the school girls to be campaigners, the program has been able to reach about 6,500 girls in the same age bracket, as well as 1,000 parents of teenage girls and 650 community elders.
"We educated the girls not only about the physical implications of early marriage, but also the social implications," he said. "We also taught them about the laws in place."
Ironically, Sindh, the province with the highest rate of early marriages, is also the only province in Pakistan to have a law against it.
Shaiq Usmani, the former chief justice of the Sindh High Court, who was part of the legislation process, says the law, passed by the Sindh Assembly in April, prescribes imprisonment up to three years and fines for the guardians or parents, and for the person who solemnizes the marriage of any girl or boy under 18 years old.
The challenge lies in the implementation, he said.
"It cannot be implemented unless those affected the most by it own up to it," Usmani told News Lens.
Another campaigner, Ayesha Baksh, also 16, from Malir, was nearly married off to a 35-year-old man by her family.
"I tried to talk to my parents. They didn't listen. So I sought the help of one of my teachers. Eventually my mother was persuaded to drop the plan," she told News Lens.
Jamila Fazil, a teacher at the government girls' high school in Khadro in Sanghar district, said change could only come if parents understood the impacts of adolescent marriage.
"If the people understand what they do to their daughters' lives by marrying them off while they are still adolescents, they would probably put an end to the phenomenon themselves."
