Syrian women discuss child marriage

(The Daily Star)- “When I got married I was still a kid, I used to ask my husband to bring me sweets,” 20-year-old Rima explained to the group of Syrian women sitting together in her neighbor’s home in north Lebanon. One of the other young women in the group gets up to close the heavy metal door, blocking out the noise of traffic running through the Akkar district town of Douseh.

Of the six women sitting in a rough circle on the covered floor, most were from Tal Kalakh, just a few kilometers over the border in their war-torn country. Most were also married before they were 18.

They gathered Tuesday for an Early Marriage Awareness Session hosted by Save the Children in the large room divided by makeshift plywood walls that turn the concrete bones of the half-finished building into a family home.

Around the world, one girl under 15 is married every 7 seconds, Save the Children reported ahead of International Day of the Girl on Oct. 11.

While stats for Lebanon are incomplete, in a 2015 study by Université St. Joseph, 13 percent of Lebanese and 23 percent of Syrian women reported being married under the age of 18.

Before the start of the Syria crisis, the rate of child marriage across the Middle East was on the decline faster than in any other region, a U.N. report in 2014 found. However, the rate among the Syrian community is again on the rise.

Violence and unrelenting economic uncertainty has pushed more families to marry their daughters off, citing safety and financial insecurity.

“Conflict and poverty are really the main reasons for early marriage,” Media, Advocacy and Communications Manager for Save the Children Sandy Maroun told The Daily Star.

However, marrying young can impact every aspect of a girl’s life.

“When a girl gets married she doesn’t have the opportunity to go to school. There is also an impact on her health because if she gets pregnant at an early age her body isn’t ready yet,” Maroun said.

With financial insecurity playing a major role, the absence of economic and educational opportunities hamper change. Overcoming these hurdles is no mean feat for Lebanon and the over 1 million Syrian refugees it hosts.

Despite this, civil society organizations, government, as well as Syrian women themselves keep working to reduce the prevalence of early marriage using awareness sessions.

Save the Children has been holding meetings on child marriage for refugees in Lebanon for four years, reaching over 1,000 women to date. These sessions aim to give women the knowledge and confidence to speak out against the practice.

“We try to get parents to realize that if their daughters are getting married that doesn’t necessarily protect them,” Maroun added.

Those who came to Tuesday’s session were concerned parents and some were young girls themselves not so long ago. They share their stories, talking animatedly over each other and the squeals of the many children demanding their attention.

“I ran away from Syria to come here for my daughters,” Zeina, who managed to delay her marriage until the age of 20 after seeing a school friend’s life change dramatically when she married at 13. She is now 26 and has four children, three of which were born since she got to Lebanon. “I want to work to get money to put them in school. I want to find alternatives to them marrying.”

Nour is 18 and five months pregnant with her second child. She married her cousin at 14 after her father died and her mother struggled to support her seven children. “At the time I didn’t think I wanted to get married but my family tried to convince me. Even on my wedding day I wanted to refuse ... now I don’t have anyone helping me [with my son] and it’s hard, it’s very hard,” she said.

“Of course, there is no war here [but in] ... Lebanon it’s happening more because of the poverty,” Nour explained, talking about the constant rise in child marriage. “Families should not let girls get married early because it can come with a lot of hardship.”

Ahmed Bayram, who works for Save the Children, highlighted one example. He explained that Rima used to put sugar in her baby’s milk, which he said led to health complications for the child. “She didn’t know, she just saw the baby was crying and to help she put sugar in the milk,” he said.

Nour echoed the sentiment, “it’s difficult for a child to raise a child,” she said.

“We have a few success stories, but this is on a small scale,” said Maya Ammar, communications coordinator for Lebanese NGO KAFA (enough) Violence & Exploitation. The NGO also runs awareness raising activities primarily within the refugee population but has been working on the issue in the country before the Syrian crisis brought more attention to the problem.

Without national minimum age for marriage and the issue largely falling under the purview of the country’s 15 different personal status laws unique to different official religious sects, the government’s role in legislating against child marriage is limited. “You will not be able to stop tradition when it’s legally legitimized,” Ammar explained.

However, laws may only go so far explained Fehmi Karami – an adviser to the Lebanese Social Affairs Ministry on children’s and women’s rights. “Most early marriages are done outside the religious courts by a sheikh that is not a formal sheikh,” he explained. This means the marriages and, often, subsequent children are not officially registered.

Despite the challenges, the outlook at the end of Tuesday’s session was positive. “There are many cases when a mother comes [to a session] with her engaged daughter. One of them decided she would not go ahead with marrying her daughter at 16 and it persuaded many parents to change their minds [too],” Bayram said.

Before leaving the residence, Zeina said with a smile, “We support each other through these sessions, everyone gives their advice to not fall into this trap. It makes us more confident to discuss and share these stories.”