The Horror Of Indian Child Brides

THE barbaric act of marrying of young daughters isn’t just accepted – it’s expected.

A CHILD bride activist in India reveals parents in rural India marry off their daughters young, believing they will go to heaven if the ceremony is done before the girls hit puberty. While child brides share their harrowing stories in an honest portrayal of the barbaric practice still rife in parts of India, one details the time her new husband and father-in-law both raped her before she escaped.

Villages across Shravastidistrict, in Uttar Pradesh, northern India, reports some of the highest number of child marriages across the country. Dr Jitender Chaturvedi, founder of the non-governmental organisation Developmental Association for Human Advancement (DEHAT), and who worked in the area for the last seven years, explains, “Shravastisuff ers from some of the worst population indicators in India, with literacy rates below 50 percent (37 percent for women) and infant mortality above 140 per thousand live births. A scary 83 percent of girls in Shravastimarry before age 18, which is far above state and national average. And out of the total child births in Shravasti, 10.7 percent are born to girls under 18, which has also made Shravastinumber one in recording a maximum number of malnutrition cases. It is a district in dire straits.”

Dr Chaturvedi has spoken out following the news from UNICEF that India has seen a sharp decline in child marriages over the last 10 years, with 27 percent of girls getting married before their 18th birthday against 47 percent a decade ago. But a whole generation of young girls are still affected by the tradition and suffer irreversible damage both mentally and physically by the pressures of marrying young.