The words “Child” and “Marriage” are pretty self-explanatory, and to live in a world where these two very opposite words come together to form a cultural and traditional “practice” that is still ongoing in most Middle Eastern and African societies nowadays, is just outrageous and unacceptable. Child Marriage usually consists of the legal union of an adult to an underage individual or in rarer cases, the union of two underage children, as a “deal” done by the parents of those children. In many cases those deals are done in conditions of extreme poverty where the parents send off their daughters in return of a certain amount of money, since they can’t provide for them financially.
Child marriage is highly discussed by the UNICEF yet, when the media addresses the situation it is only to cover the drastic crimes that occur in such environments. For instance, the buzz of the 8 year old girl from Yemen who died on her wedding night because of severe sexual injuries was all over the Internet a few years ago and similar cases still surface every few weeks all over social media. It seems like the media is too quick to cover these tragic events but never give the same amount of importance to raising awareness to such actions or just profiling families that are currently living in those circumstances. Of course we cannot deny the persevering work of worldwide NGOs that are also helping in conservative and rather undeveloped countries such as: Girls Not Brides, Saarthi Trust – India, Egyptian Foundation for Advancement of the Childhood Condition – Egypt and Seyaj – Yemen…etc. that are fighting for the freedom of young girls and trying to free them for such horrible households by creating online and offline campaigns and documentaries for awareness. Nevertheless, those campaigns are not nearly enough since still in 2016 we read about young girls dying on their wedding nights or other cases of severe emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Let’s talk about Lebanon for a second; KAFA has done a great job with their online campaign about child marriage but child marriage in Lebanon is still happening as we speak and isn’t decreasing as it
should be.
This shows how in many places worldwide we still have a long way to go to abolish child marriage. The Arab world, other conservative African countries, and Lebanon have to focus more on their campaigns and come up with other similar videos and documentaries that can go viral in denouncing this inhumane practice. We also have to let victims of such acts speak out and to let the media give them a voice so it could be heard. Media outlets also should try as much as possible to remain ethical and unbiased in their coverage while still denouncing a barbaric practice that speaks for itself.
Maria Aoun 