Girls still suffer from early marriages

Kongwa. Tanzania joins the rest of the world to mark the 30th anniversary of Rights of Children amid reports that abuse of children’s rights remain a cause for concern.
A typical example is Joyce Lukas*. At only 18 years she has already been married twice, the first of the marriages came about  when she was 14 years old.
By then she was just an innocent teen girl, who did not know anything about marriage, let alone sexual affairs.
“I was just at home when my father, who didn’t want me to question or challenge any decision took about my life, introduced me to an old man. From the outlook, the two were almost age mates. My father instructed me to go with the old man,” recalled Ms Joyce.
She did not know where the old man would take her. However, upon reaching at the old man’s house at a village in Gairo far from her Lenjuru home village in Kongwa District, she began to sense that she had been forced into a marriage.
“The old man had another wife, whom we were not staying with at the thatched house. Whenever the drunkard old man came back home, he forced to sleep with me. I felt ashamed to sleep with a man of my father’s age so I refused,” she says.
“I was severely beaten to the extent that I had no choice, but to surrender to his demands. He forced himself into me and left the house thereafter. I cried the whole night,” recalls Ms Joyce.
“My parents were separated. My father married  another woman…I have not heard from my mother since she left the house,” she says.
Since Ms Joyce was forced into early marriage in 2017, she had never enjoyed her life. The memories of her first experience with the forced marriage were very painful that they would never be erased from her mind.
For Joyce, conjugal rights the old man demanded from her were unjust and unfair.
“After several months, the old man took me back to my father’s home. He complained that I failed to satisfy him. He demanded for the refund of four cows and Sh200,000 he had paid as dowry. He was refunded three cows only,” narrates Joyce, who says her coming back home was like rebirth to her, despite the humiliation and embarrassment she went through.
The suffering of forced early marriage didn’t end up when the old man sent her back home. She stayed for a few months before she was forced to marry a young village man, who was older than her.

At the age 17 years, Joyce delivered a baby girl last year. Unlike many pregnant young girls, Joyce was lucky that she didn’t experience pregnancy complications before and during delivery. She was lucky that she had normal delivery at a village healthcare centre.
According to the Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey and Malaria Indicator Survey 2015-2016, marriage is a primary indication of the regular exposure of women to the risk of pregnancy.” For girls to become young mothers, they expose themselves to a huge risk associated to pregnancy and other health complications.
Most of teenage girls know little or nothing at all about pregnancy and the complications associated with it.  
They would rely on their mothers and other close relatives to offer them little information they already have about sexual and reproductive health matters.  
Teen mothers cannot handle motherhood activities well. For them, raising a child well is also a problem. It is obvious that the quality of care a teen mother offers to her child is detrimental to the wellbeing and growth of the child’s.
According to the Kongwa District Medical Officer, Dr Thomas Samuel, early marriages expose millions of teenage girls to health risks associated with early pregnancy.
The 2015-2016 TDHS-MIS report considers a mother  “too young” if she is less than 18 years. It confirms that very young mothers may experience difficult pregnancies and deliveries because of their physical immaturity. The report shows that perinatal mortality rate is the highest among young mothers aged less than 20.
According to the report, “there is a strong relationship between children’s chances of dying and the fertility behaviour of their mothers. The probability of dying in early childhood is much greater for children born to mothers relatively young.”
Consequently, child marriage affects economic progress not only for girls themselves, but for their families and the country, according to the 2017 National Survey on the Drivers and Consequences of Child Marriage in Tanzania by the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children.
Joyce says her life has been a nightmare. She has to toil to get her basic needs as her husband doesn’t provide much for her and the baby.

According to her, the abuse still continues though not to the extent she experienced at the old man’s house.
Joyce, who had never been to school, says when she was a little girl she aspired to become a teacher.
“Many rural parents don’t see the importance of education to their daughters. All they want is to pocket money and have cattle as dowry,” says Joyce, whose father received two cows and Sh350,000 from the 24-years-old villager as dowry for his teenage daughter’s second marriage. Various reports have revealed that child marriage violates girls’ rights to health, education and opportunity. It exposes girls to violence throughout their lives, and traps them in a cycle of poverty.
According to Girls not Brides report, more than half of girls from the poorest families in the developing world are married when still children.
According to Unicef, 31 per cent of girls in Tanzania are married before their 18th birthday while five per cent are married before the age of 15. The UN organisation says Tanzania has the 11th highest absolute number of child brides in the world – 779,000.
As the International Convention on the Rights of the Child points out, 650 million girls and women were married before their 18th birthday.

The 2003 Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children says below  this  age,  the  girl  is  usually  physically  and  psychologically  not  expected  to  be  ready to shoulder the responsibilities of marriage and child bearing.
According to the 2010 Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS, 2010), around 37 per cent of Tanzanian girl children are married before they turn 18.  The 2015-2016 TDHS-MIS shows that “marriage and sexual activity help determine the extent to which women are exposed to the risk of pregnancy. 

The report hints that 23 per cent of women aged 15-19 are currently married or living together compared with only two percent of men in the same age category. 

However, the survey, says the timing and circumstances of marriage and sexual activity also have profound consequences for women’s and men’s lives.”