Child Brides: the wound and possible responses in Cambodia
Even though the legal age of marriage is 18, cultural traditions and poverty continue to encourage early marriages. In tribal areas it is one in two, with brides as young as 13. The war with Thailand has exacerbated the practice, but some government pilot projects and the experience of the Christian NGO Chab Dai show that education can change things.
Phnom Penh (AsiaNews) – Buoyed by the outstanding success of some pilot projects to fight child marriage in remote villages, Cambodia is accelerating its efforts to stamp out a practice that disproportionately impacts girls as young as 13 in indigenous and isolated communities.
One in five girls in the Buddhist kingdom is married off before they turn the legal age of 18. But the rate soars to one in every two among indigenous tribes, known as the Khmer Loeu (Upland Khmer), in the remote, mountainous northeast corner bordering Laos and Vietnam.
Some are even married before they turn 14, social workers told AsiaNews.
The main drivers are poverty, centuries-old cultural traditions, lack of education and weak enforcement of good laws by untrained and under-resourced officials.
Cambodia is not alone. “Child marriage is a global issue. It is fuelled by gender inequality, poverty, social norms and insecurity, and has devastating consequences all over the world," says Girls Not Brides, a global network of more than 1,400 civil society groups.
With the successful trial in the Northeast, the Cambodian government is going national, focusing its campaign on enforcement, education, training of officials and combatting poverty across the nation, beyond the socially and economically backward northeastern provinces of Ratanakiri, Mondulkiri and Stung Treng.
Up to 75 per cent of Ratanakiri's 236,000 people are indigenous and up to 80 per cent of Mondulkiri’s population of just over 90,000.
“This is a very, very serious issue for children in Cambodia. Especially in Ratanakriri and Mondulkiri," said Hor Kosal, national director of Chab Dai (Joining Hands), a Christian-inspired NGO that fights human trafficking and abuse and helps girls who have already been forced to marry underage.
“Cultural norms, especially in the northern provinces of Cambodia like Ratanakiri, Mondulkiri and Stung Treng are a major factor. We have many cases,” he told AsiaNews.
The age of legal marriage in Cambodia is 18 for women, although teenagers can marry as young as 16 with parental permission, typically involving teen pregnancy.
Economic pressure for underage marriage has increased this year, fuelled by the border conflict with Thailand, which has sent a million workers back to their villages with no jobs, Hor and other social workers told AsiaNews.
More than a million migrant workers have been forced to return to Cambodia from Thailand, mostly to poor rural areas.
Despite Cambodia's tough and progressive child protection laws, the combination of poverty, ancient cultural traditions, and overstretched government resources is undermining the government's attempts to stamp out the practice.
“Many officials mean well," Hor explained, “but they don't have the skills, the training. Child protection is very different from their other duties. And they lack financial resources, and don't have any budget specifically to help the children."
Child marriage causes a cascading ripple of problems, not just in the family, but also on the local community and then nationally.
It locks generations into poverty, strains an already overloaded healthcare system and drags on economic growth through costs and blocks girls out of education and training and prevents them from becoming the skilled workers the country desperately needs.
“Adolescent childbearing or marriage can compound social disadvantages for a girl and her family: disrupt her education, restrict her role to the domestic and reproductive sphere, and limit her future employment opportunities," says a report by ReliefWeb, the information portal of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).
The economic impacts carry to the next generation and the wider community, as the cycle of poverty is perpetuated and social development, including progress towards equality, is forestalled.
Child marriage is also a problem in other Southeast Asian countries, such as Laos and Thailand.
In Cambodia the problem is not just confined to home. There is a thriving trade trafficking teenage brides to China, where more than three decades of the one-child policy has created a generation of men desperate for brides.
Most of those sold to Chinese men come from the same areas targeted by the Cambodian government campaign.
Countrywide, Cambodia has made little progress in reducing child marriage for decades, says the United Nations Children's fund (UNICEF). The rate has gone from 25 per cent in 2000 to 18 per cent in 2022, a report estimated in January.
However, the success of the pilot projects in the Northeast led by Plan International Cambodia and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA) shines a light on the path forward.
The proportion of girls married before age 18 dropped sharply from 26.3 per cent to 9.5 per cent, while marriage before age 15 fell from 2.5 per cent to 0.6 per cent.
The critical element to the trial programme was education, keeping girls in schools, which requires lifting families out of poverty, and teaching them about sexuality and reproduction.
But Chab Dai’s Hor argues that the critical change must be the concrete implementation of government policies.
“Cambodia's laws, including (on) child brides, child labour on paper are perfect. On paper,” he said.
"We have policy guidelines for procedures, rules. Everything looks perfect. But when they apply them, the implementation, they are not fully functional. It is limited. That is why this happens and the children are still facing the trauma of getting married."
Photo: symbolic image taken from www.chabdai.org
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