The Crime of Marrying a Child Essay

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Imagine being told, by your own family, that they are selling you to be wed to a man three to six times your age; that is exactly what many young child brides are being told every day. In fact, studies conducted by the ICRW (International Center for Research on Woman) say that one third of the world’s girls are married before the age of eighteen and one in nine girls are married before the age of fifteen ("Child Marriage Facts and Figures." ). The act of child marriage normally occurs in countries pushed further into poverty. Most girls that are wed by their family at a young age are sexually abused and/or put to slavery by their husbands and are sometimes brutally murdered. There is a high chance that the girl could die from childbirth or get HIV’s at a young age. Throughout this paper I will give you numerous reasons to stand against child marriage.

First of all, child marriage is most likely to occur in countries with a higher poverty rate. Picture this: a family with two parents, two younger boys, and one 15 year old girl living in Niger. The father of the family is making only two dollars a day and the mother has to stay home to take care of the children; talk about a serious budget. Because the household does not have the money to buy the proper essentials to care for the whole family, the father decides to sell his only daughter to a man living in the village. Take Melka for example, she was a 14 year old girl living in Ethiopia when she came home from school to discover she was to be married that day to an elderly man in her community. (“Ending child marriage ..”)Her father either needed to pay off debt or just simply wanted more money to provide for the rest of his family. Sometimes the man that buys the child bride even sexually abuses and/or puts her to slavery.

Second, most child brides are sexually abused or put to slavery by their newly wed husband. In fact, Girls who marry before 18 are more likely to experience domestic violence than their peers who marry later. A study conducted by ICRW in two states in India found that girls who were married before 18 were twice as likely to report being beaten, slapped or threatened by their husbands than girls who married later ("Child Marriage Facts and Figures." ) Lets take the true story of an eight year Yemini girl who will remain unnamed; this young girl was married to a man four times her age after being sold off by her father. On their wedding night the new husband of the young bride forced her
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