The INFO Project Blog

Thanks to 16 year-old television star Jamie Lynn Spears’s pregnancy, and the new movie Juno, teen sex has been appearing in chastising headlines of late. In many less developed countries, teen pregnancy is often the rule, not the exception. However the vast majority of sexual activity takes place within marriage-girls can´t Just Say No.

Early marriage–also referred to as child marriage, because the brides in countries like India and Ethiopia are as young as 5 years old–is a harmful traditional practice that can be emotionally devastating. In unstable and impoverished Afghanistan child brides are married to much older men. In the photo at right by Stephanie Sinclair, which was the UNICEF photo of 2007, a 40 year-old man sits next to his 11 year-old bride.

A recent article on Radio Free Europe discusses the victimization this involves.

In such places, many girls are forced into marriages when they are as young as nine or 10, says Khatema Mosleh of the Afghan Women’s Network (AWN), a nonpartisan group of organizations that campaign for women’s rights in Afghanistan. Most marry far older men — some in their 60s — whom they meet for the first time at their wedding.

So young are some girls, Mosleh says, that they hold onto their toys during the wedding ceremony. And they usually become mothers in their early teens, while they are still children themselves.

A child bride in Afganistan talks about her experience being wed at 13.

“I was so angry that I wanted to kill myself,” she says, asking that her surname not be used. “I didn’t have a knife, I didn’t have any drug to inject into myself, so I decided to set myself on fire. Using gasoline was the easiest way.”

The INFO Project focuses on child marriage in its End Violence against Women initiative, and is organizing a screening with ICRW and Hopkins of the PBS NOW program Child Brides: Stolen Lives followed by a panel discussion. Stay tuned for more details!