News and Press
Malda woman’s fight against child marriage
by Madhuparna Das
Even though, child marriages are unpopular, it still remains a social menace, which is rampant in rural areas. While the local administration looks incompetent at curbing this menace, an unassuming 21-year-old girl from a remote village in Malda has taken the mantle to eradicating this menace. Meet Anjali Burman, a resident of Balarampur village, a third-year student in Malda College.
Not only did Anjali manage to save herself from child marriage, she also managed to rescue seven other girls in the age group of 12 to 14 from the clutches of child marriage. Anjali's father is a daily labourer earning wages, who passed away five months back. Anjali has a younger brother who studies in a local school. The family is run by Anjali's mother as a bonded labourer. At the age of 15 , Anjali was told that she has be married off as her father will not be able to take care of the family any more. Anjali's marriage was also fixed. The family was putting pressure on her to get married early according to the community''s tradition.
But after she resisted her marriage, she did not sit idle. Anjali formed a small group with her friends in her village. Since then whenever, she used to get any news of a minor girl being married off, she with her friends used to reach the spot and they tried to convince the family members. However, Anjali always informed police and administration in resisting the marriages.
"In our locality, girls are married off at an early age. My parents also wanted to marry me off, but I resisted it. From my childhood, I had nutured dreams that I would be educated and would be financially independent. After I resisted my marriage, I always thought there were other girls like me in the area. And I know that how it is a difficult task for a village girl to resist the marriage. The whole village and the entire community stands against the girl in such cases. I took oath that would try my best not to allow any of the minor girls to be married," she said.
"Initially, I had faced difficulty from the villagers when I tried resist any minor girls' marriage in my village. But gradually, the villagers started supporting me. I got help from the police and local administration as well. The practice of child marriage might have become more unpopular, but it is still rampant in this areas," Anjali added.
Anjali imarried on her own condition five months back. But she is still continuing with her studies. "I want to complete my studies. I want to be admitted in an university and complete my post graduation. I dream of being a government officer and work for our state," she added.
Ending legalised violence against children: Global report 2011 Published
Published jointly by the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children and Save the Children Sweden, Ending legalised violence against children: Global report 2011 reviews progress towards prohibition of corporal punishment of children throughout the world in the context of follow up to the UN Secretary General’s Study on Violence against Children. Based on detailed analyses of the work of international human rights treaty bodies and of the first cycle of the Universal Periodic Review, the report identifies states which appear to be making progress and those where reforms must be made. Information on active campaigns worldwide, recent research into the prevalence of corporal punishment and a table of the legality of corporal punishment in all settings in all states provide both an overview of the current situation and a context for increasing efforts to enact legislation which fully protects children from assault. Click here to download the full report.
A limited number of hard copies of the report are available: e mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
www.endcorporalpunishment.orgTen Whats With…Dr. Susan Bissell
Dr. Susan Bissell is Associate Director and Programmes Chief Child Protection, UNICEF, based in New York. Susan joined UNICEF in 1987 where her work has taken her to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Haiti, Guatemala and Ethiopia. She holds a PhD in public health and medical anthropology from the University of Melbourne. While completing her doctorate, she also co-produced the documentary “A Kind of Childhood” about human trafficking. Susan is widely published and was a member of the Editorial Board of the report of the UN Secretary General’s Study on Violence Against Children which was released in 2006.
1. What is the most interesting project you are currently working on?
I actually work on programs, which are a bit different than projects in the sense that we’re trying to shift from a project by project approach to a much more systemic approach. And that includes rolling out a new strategy, approved by our board in May 2008, which provides me with a framework for working with our offices around the world in strengthening child protection systems.
Child protection covers a broad area of guidelines, systems and practical service delivery. For example, there are currently 220 million children under the age of five who don’t have a birth certificate. In many cases, that implies a lack of access to school, and if you do have access to school, you might not be able to graduate or receive your certificate of completion. It means that it’s very difficult to determine age, to work, and to get married. We are working to introduce digital birth registration across the globe to ensure that every child born on this planet has a birth certificate.
On the other end of the spectrum, we’re developing a master’s degree in child protection in coordination with Harvard University. The challenge is that child protection is interdisciplinary and/or misunderstood. Some people look at child protection and think of charitable or social work, which is important, but there needs to be solid academic base behind it.
One final thought: We now have seven or eight Security Council resolutions that feature the protection of children, and a number of these resolutions call for specific action by UNICEF. This occupies a tremendous amount of my time because it is an incredibly intricate area of work; it’s linked to peace and security, rule of law, justice, good governance, and social justice—and it is completely unfunded. So UNICEF has to raise the money. We’re talking about reintegrating kids who have some way been affiliated with armed groups, and we’re talking primarily about an adolescent group. If we don’t get the social, economic, and academic components of reintegration, we’re going to have a vicious cycle. At this point, I feel like we’ve outdone our advocacy on these issues, and now we have to execute. It is a broad mandate, which is why we’re working much more systemically now.
2. What got you started in your career?
I don’t know how old I was at the time, but I remember seeing a picture of the vulture on a child during a famine——that struck me. In sixth grade, I organized a walk around our school to support CARE. This was a very small school in a suburb of Toronto, but we did raise some money for CARE.
While I was starting my undergraduate degree, I did some volunteer work for UNICEF and OXFAM, and that got me closer to the issues I was interested in. Between my second and third year of university I took a year off to work on an issue that moved me; I stayed in Puerto Rico, for a year and then traveled to the Dominican Republic where I connected with Ray Owen, manager of WAPA radio. A local radio station that still exists. His family kind of adopted me. I told him what I wanted to do, and he told me to concretize my career goals. And that was the birth of my realization that I needed an organizational affiliation, since I was already doing the volunteer work. So I went back and finished my degree and then did an internship in UNICEF in 1987. And I stayed.
3. What advice would you give to young people in your field?
I’m mentoring a couple of people right now. First of all, if you really want to do this kind of work, it is a challenge to get into it, but you will get there eventually. Second, there are lots of opportunities out there. If this is about your passion, your commitment, your integrity, it could be anything. And I say that because I’m very proud to work for UNICEF and I love working for this organization. But you can do this kind of work with all kinds of organizations. Third, don’t be too impatient about pursuing the “right” academic track right away. Finally, go out there and get some field experience, because that is the one thing that everyone else will not have. You can have a PhD in public health, but if you’ve never traveled to the countries in which we work, then you will not fully understand the issues. Experience is important.
4. What person, book, or article has been most influential on your thinking?
Book: Death Without Weeping by Nancy Scheper-Hughes. It was the first scholarly piece that I really threw myself into in order to help myself understand cultural relativism. Particularly when you’re working in child protection, there are a lot of standards, and they are really good standards. And you have to marry those standards with the reality on the ground.
Person: Bert Pelto. He is a phenomenal person whom I met while I was working in Bangladesh when we were really struggling to understand the lives and livelihoods of children on the streets and in some industries. He was a person I really respected and admired. He came back with the realization that children who pick garbage on the streets self-identify as recycling specialists. And I will never forget that. He greatly influenced my thinking.
5. What was the last book you finished?
Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, which I read while I was visiting my sister-in-law in London. To be honest, I mainly read the New Yorker, the New York Magazine, and the New York Times.
6. What is the most overlooked problem that UNICEF faces?
The most overlooked problem that UNICEF faces is the issue of violence against children. We’re just beginning to understand the nature and extent of the consequences. To quote a phrase, ‘the cost of inaction in this area is extreme.’
7. What is the biggest misperception of UNICEF?
The biggest misperception is that UNICEF is against inter-country adoption. We are most certainly not against inter-country adoption. I think that there is some very deliberate and misleading journalism in this area. We support the continuum of care: everything from trying to support vulnerable families so they don’t have to relinquish their children; to permanent foster care; to having a child with his or her extended family on a permanent basis; to transparent and ethical inter-country adoption. We are guided by international standards like the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is saddening and it is personal. There is so much written about what my colleagues and I are trying to do in the field to fix these problems, and I think we’re making progress on addressing this misperception.
8. What is the most significant emerging global challenge?
I believe that the financial crisis is the biggest emerging threat. It impacts UNICEF on a number of levels, namely that we are a funding-based organization. But more important is the actual impact of the crisis on children and their families. I feel like we just gained momentum on our issues, which require significant investment, and I really fear movement backwards. We rely on the generosity of individuals and corporations, and the social sector is the first to be cut.
9. What would you research if given a year and unlimited resources?
We’re conducting the first-ever household surveys around the world on violence prevalence in children, including sexual violence—part of a global public-private partnership called Together for Girls. If we were able to devote two years and unlimited funding, I would make sure that we had representation from all parts of the world, and supplement those surveys with qualitative data. This is our missing bit of information: the lived and global experience of childhood and our nuanced understanding of what that means – we would find some amazing things about children’s resilience, coping skills, and use of technology—and we would also find some horrifying things.
10. If you could pose one question to global leaders, what would it be?
What more could be done to protect children around the world from violence, abuse, and exploitation, if we put all of the world’s leading thinkers together in a room? I believe we’re at a tipping point of innovation and ideas. At the heart of many of these violations against children are political and social determinants: how do we address this? What more can we do and how? For me, it is the multiple marginalization of children. Poverty is not the only factor, or even the most important factor. There is a confluence of factors that create these situations. I call it poverty plus. The approach we need to take is a ‘poverty plus approach’, in which we address not only the inequity of poverty, but also the discrimination and exclusion.
Read the original article on the Council on Foreign Relations Website.
Campaign Draws Attention to Plight of Child Brides
Forcing young females into marriage contributes to high fertility rates and ultimately increases poverty
There is one element that takes this story from the tragic to the truly horrific: Ali was only 10 years old.
Ali lives in Yemen, where 14 per cent of girls are forced into marriage before the age of 15. She is one of the lucky ones. She escaped.
Defying Yemen's traditional culture, Ali slipped away from her family while on a visit home and made her way alone across the city of Sanaa to the courthouse. She camped out there, trying to get the attention of a judge to hear her plea. Her story reached the ears of Shada Nasser, a prominent female Yemeni human rights lawyer, who took on Ali's case. Together they won her freedom.
Every day, more than 25,000 girls under the age of 18 become brides around the world. That's more than 10 million a year. One in seven girls in the developing world will be married before their 15th birthday. Some brides are as young as eight or nine.
When a young girl is forced to marry, she loses nearly everything.
She loses her childhood. She is forced into sexual intercourse, pregnancy and childbirth before she is emotionally and physically ready.
She loses her education. Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former Irish President Mary Robinson recently told us about their visit to Ethiopia, where they met child brides. Robinson asked one of them, what was her strongest memory of her wedding day? The girl replied, "That was the day I had to leave school."
She loses opportunities. Because most child brides are forced to leave school, they are less able to access economic opportunities to generate income and lift their families out of poverty.
She likely loses her health, and possibly even her life. A girl under 15 is five times more likely to die in childbirth than a woman over 20. The risk of complications in pregnancy and child-birth is much higher. Her children will be as much as 60 per cent more likely to die before their first birthday than children born to a mother over 19.
The plight of child brides has drawn the attention of some pretty powerful intellects.
Tutu and Robinson are members of The Elders, a gathering of world-respected senior leaders who have come together to apply their considerable knowledge and experience to identifying the world's biggest problems, and finding solutions. They told us that what they saw in Ethiopia led them to make child marriage one of their top priorities.
In a short video about child marriage, Robinson explains why, among all the world's challenges, they have set their sights on child marriage: "How can you improve girls education when they are taken out of school to be married? How can you reduce maternal or child mortality, when girls are giving birth at 12 or 13? How can you reduce poverty when child marriage perpetuates poverty?" According to The Elders, child marriage is an obstacle to achieving six of the eight Millennium Development Goals.
The Elders aren't the only ones raising alarms.
As the global population passed seven billion late last year, the United Nations Population Fund released its State of the World Population report, identifying the issues and challenges facing our world as the size of humanity continues to grow. The report draws a pretty clear line - child marriages contribute to higher fertility rates in developing countries, and higher fertility rates lead to increased poverty.
It's a vicious circle because, as much as child marriage leads to poverty, poverty leads back around to child marriage. Nujood Ali's family had 16 children, and her father had no job. In families like this, selling a daughter to be married means dowry money from the husband and one less mouth to feed.
In drought-ravished Kenya this summer, we heard about "drought brides" - girls sold by their parents to raise money to feed their desperately hungry families.
The Elders believe that child marriage is a neglected issue. "People don't seem to talk much about child brides," Tutu laments in the video with Robinson. "Perhaps it is seen as a family issue, but not a public one. Or a cultural issue, and not one of human rights."
Tutu and Robinson and their influential colleagues are fighting back against child marriage by speaking out, and encouraging others to do the same. At this year's conference of the Clinton Global Initiative, Tutu and Robinson launched The Elders' new worldwide campaign: Girls Not Brides.
The campaign website - http: // girlsnotbrides.org - contains a wealth of information on child marriage around the world, and ways all of us can get involved.
Girls like Ali have the right to a childhood. They have the right to go to school. They have the right to choose when, and to whom, they marry. We can protect that right by speaking out and making child marriage a front-page issue.
"I cannot stay silent," says Tutu. Neither can we.
Craig and Marc Kielburger co-founded Free the Children. The goal of the organization is to free children from poverty and exploitation through education.
Read the original article on The Vancouver Sun.
Message from the Chairs: Reflection on Year 2011
At this time of year, when many are about to celebrate the birth of a child in a manger and accompany the year of 2011 to its end, it is appropriate to look back at this year from the perspective of A Day of Prayer and Action for Children. This initiative, generously launched by the Arigatou Foundation, is still in its infancy and yet it seems from year to year to confirm that people of many faiths and of good faith appreciate that which the Day of Prayer and Action for Children stands for: a tool for engagement and commitment. We are looking for ways to manifest that the security and safety of children matters to us. We are looking for possibilities to join others in a common endeavour to provide space for children that they in peace can look to the future without apprehension or fear.
Violence against children is a reality threatening children in many forms; it manifests itself not only in war and communitarian conflicts; it is shadowing the child in poverty and hunger; it is a devouring danger and threat to children in domestic violence and abuse, in that very space, where they should have been able to feel secure and safe. The theme for 2011 and for the years to come, “STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN,” is conveying the harsh reality for more children than we can imagine. Images and pictures from various walks of life and various situations in the world throw themselves at us.
The responses that the “Day of Prayer and Action for Children” elicit substantiate that we need channels to increase and expand cooperation between various actors in the world involved in safeguarding the rights of the child: religious communities, UN organizations and NGOS.
People throughout the world and in various constellations have increasingly taken upon themselves to respond to the call to celebrate the Day of Prayer and Action for Children. For some it has been a possibility to get together across religious communities to celebrate through prayer and reflection and some kind of common action their concern and commitment. For others it has opened ways ahead in concrete support of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. For yet others, it has enabled religious leaders to launch in unison and with some of the bodies involved in the work for children programs destined to alleviate poverty and ending violence against children.
The centre and network Sarvodaya in Colombo, Sri Lanka is these days the venue for a group of young adults of many faiths from around the world, all involved through the Global Network of Religions for Children, another initiative of the Arigatou Foundation. They have come to craft an action plan for how young people can be concrete in challenging the spectre of poverty in all its aspects. They are inspired by Sarvodaya, which, inspired by Buddhist teachings engages in concrete action for children, malnourished or abandoned, victims of violence due to war and conflict or abuse at home by parents and relatives. But they carried also with them to Colombo their memories and experiences, recorded through videos and slides, of their own celebrations a couple of weeks ago of the Day of Prayer and Action for Children, in places like Belgium, Uganda, India and Argentina. Their witness is convincing enough to affirm that this program has a potential of galvanizing the concerns of people of all ages for the well-being and safety of children.
While we accompany 2011 these last remaining weeks, we are grateful for the response that the Day of Prayer and Action has received throughout the world and we hope that we in 2012 will be able to solidify this enthusiasm towards even greater commitment and support.
Season’s Greetings
Kul Gautam and Hans Ucko
Chairs of The Day of Prayer and Action for Children
