92pc girls quit schools after marriage in three unions: Study
Around 69 percent of adolescent girls between the age of 13 and 15 years get married, and 92 percent of them drop out of schools, according to a new study.
Moreover, 89 percent of them get pregnant at least once before they become 19, without having any knowledge of the reproductive healthcare system.
The study was funded by the Dutch government under the project Initiatives for Married Adolescent Girls' Empowerment (IMAGE).
Five local and international organisations, led by Terre des Hommes Netherlands, surveyed 4,497 married girls of three unions of Gaibandha, Nilaphamari, and Kurigram, in February-March 2016. The findings were shared at a discussion at The Daily Star Centre yesterday.
“We found some girls (1 percent of the child marriage victims) who were married before 12. It's very shocking,” said Farhana Akter, research and knowledge management specialist of IMAGE.
“Most of the child marriage victims drop out of schools and only 17 percent of them use sanitary napkin, which is essential for menstrual hygiene management,” she said.
Morium Nesa, national coordinator protection of Terre des Hommes, said people treated these girls who got married before 18 as adults while they were still children. The girls are sometimes denied the rights they are supposed to get as children, she added.
Describing child marriage as a sexual violence, Naznin Begum Pappu, training and capacity building specialist of Terre des Hommes, said the victim girls were forced into sex and having babies.
Child marriage also triggers maternal mortality, added Halida H Akhter, chief of party at USAID-DFID NGO Health Service Delivery Project.
"The risk is higher when the girls do not get institutional child delivery service," she said.
“People don't want to take institutional delivery services considering the expense. So guardians of the pregnant women need to be more aware about this.”
IMAGE project director Farhana Jesmine Hasan said the aim of the project was to make the married girls of the three unions aware of reproductive healthcare.
In Ramchandrapur union of Gaibandha, 1,400 girls were found to be married, said SKS Foundation's chief executive Rasel Ahmed Liton, adding that this number was huge enough to "make us concerned".
Dr Abul Hossain, project director of Multi-Sectoral Programme on Violence against Women at Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, and Mushfiqua Zaman Satiar, an adviser at the Dutch embassy, also spoke.
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