The Truth about Child Brides

These two children are under 12 years old and they are getting married.

It's illegal, but no-one is stopping it.

Around every three seconds, a girl under 18 gets married.

That's ten million a year worldwide.

This is in Central America, in Africa,

in the Middle East and South Asia.

It happened in my own family in Afghanistan.

My auntie, my mother's sister, she lives in Kabul and she was married when she was 15.

And my granny had eight kids and she was married at 12.

And as far as I know, both of their marriages were really happy.

'So I want to find out what it's really like to be a child bride.

'I'm going to a wedding in India where the bride and groom are just little kids.

'Then I'm going to Bangladesh where child brides usually marry much older men.

'And can get pregnant within a year of getting married.

'Getting pregnant so young can cause horrific illnesses or even death.'

She's very beautiful.

'But I also meet some brave young girls who have defied their families and refuse to be married off.

'It's going to be a journey that challenges what I thought,

'but I am going to learn the truth about child brides.'

'A staggering 40% of the world's child marriages take place in India

'and the desert state of Rajasthan has one of the highest rates in the country.

'Today is Akha Teej, a lucky day for Hindus to get married,

'and record numbers of child marriages are taking place,

'even though there is a government campaign to stop them and police are supposed to be on high alert.

'I have found out about a joint wedding of two sisters, both of them very young.

'It's happening in Sawai Madhopur, a district with the most child brides in Rajasthan.'

This is my first ever child wedding and I'm really excited to go there and see what it's actually like.

I've heard a lot about it, I've had it in my family, but to see one will be completely different.

But I'm also interested in speaking to the parents

and finding out why they are so adamant on having their kids marry so young.

'When I reach the village, I catch a glimpse of the brides before they get ready.

'Not everyone in India has a birth certificate,

'but family members tell me Kavita, the younger one, is about six and Pepita around 11.

'Suddenly, the groom's party arrives and the celebrations are in full swing.'

FAST RHYTHMIC DRUMBEAT

'As guests dance away, the grooms patiently wait for the ceremony to begin.'

I'm standing right here. The grooms are behind me. It's their wedding day. They're completely dolled up.

One looks about 10, 12 years old, the other one's a teenager.

But you get a sense that they're quietly confident. They're not fazed at all by this.

For you, because you're so young, do you feel ready to get married? Do you want to?

So he feels totally ready to get married right now, he understands what that means?

So are you guys excited?

That much, huh?

So what are you guys most excited about then?

He said, "The thing that I'm most excited about is meeting my lifelong sweetheart."

Can you be romantic at nine? Is it possible?

The younger one, he looks like my little brother.

He's pretty much the same age.

It's so bizarre to see him here on his wedding day with this much attention and this many people.

But like I said, they're totally normal about it, they're completely confident.

'As night falls, the partying carries on.

'The atmosphere is as relaxed and happy as any other wedding

'and it's easy to forget the brides are only about 6 and 11 years old.

'But when I see Kavita and Pepita's innocent faces in full bridal make-up, it does feel surreal.'

Are you excited? You're going to get married.

They have no idea what's going on, I don't think. They're completely naive and they're just so young.

I don't think they understand what all of this is about. Any other bride would be excited or nervous.

But they're just totally unaware.

CHANTING

'It's midnight before the couples are finally seated with just the main guests who have stayed behind.

'The younger groom struggles to stay awake. It looks like it's way past his bedtime.'

CHANTING CONTINUES

'Everyone watches the priest perform the marriage rites without a worry,

'but the police do raid underage weddings

'and they carry a fine of up to £1,300 and two years in prison.

'Child marriages have been an accepted part of the culture here for hundreds of years,

'but I'm still not sure what I make of it all.'

PRIEST SPEAKS IN LOCAL LANGUAGE

It's strange because of all the guests here,

I'm the one thinking, "Oh, my God," but for them, it's normal.

'The guests dance to celebrate the marriage, but I want to know what will happen to the brides next.

'They are so much younger than the ones I have known in Afghanistan.

'I caught up with their grandfather to try and make sense of what I had just seen.'

Do you try to explain to them what's happening, that they're getting married?

Do they go to their husband's house?

How do you know they'll make good husbands when they're grown up?

Baba, I read in the newspapers that these child marriages are against the law

and the government doesn't approve of them.

Speaking to the brides' grandad, it was really interesting.

Although I thought these girls are getting married and will be shipped off to the in-laws' house,

it doesn't work like that. They're going to be living with their parents for a long time

before they move into the in-laws' house, so I see how that would work.

But how do these child marriages work out when the couples finally move in together?

Now I know that the girls don't live with their in-laws until they're about 15, 16 years old,

it still seems like a massive weight on their shoulders

to know, from about seven, that they'll have their whole life planned out in front of them.

I want to meet some people that can tell me what it's like to be married at that young an age.

Ramesh and Rukmani got married at six and seven years old.

They finally moved in together at 15 and 16 and have been living together for ten years.

If anyone will tell me what it's like to be in a child marriage, it'll be these two.

'With the family photos done, I caught up with Ramesh and Rukmani back at home.'

Do you remember knowing you were going to get married?

After you guys finally moved in together, did you think that maybe you were too young?

Would you ever consider marrying your children off really young?

Having spoken to the couple, on the face of it, they seem really happy,

but they wouldn't want the same thing for their kids and wouldn't have wanted it for themselves.

Although it might seem like a happy marriage, it's as though they're dealing with what they have.

Maybe that's what happened in my family.

Maybe my grandmothers and aunties were doing the best they could in that situation.

'Even though Rukmani gets on with Ramesh, she still feels that she missed out on the chance to study

'which could have led to a decent job and a better life.

'But underage marriage can be worse than that.

'No education means no independence. You're left totally at the mercy of your husband and in-laws.

'Mamta was married at 9 and started living with her husband at 16.

'She relied on him for everything, so she thought she had no option

'but to put up with his constant violence.

'She is now back at her parents with her son and barely makes ends meet by sewing clothes.'

When did you start feeling uncomfortable? When did it get bad for you?

So what sort of things would he do to you?

Why would he do it? For what reason?

Now that all of this has happened to you, if you could go back,

would you still get married at that young an age?

To get married so young, to make that kind of a commitment,

when it goes wrong, it goes really, really wrong

and she just did not have the capacity to fight against the people that were hurting and abusing her.

How could she? She was only a kid.

'Girls who are married before 18 are twice as likely

'to report being beaten, slapped or threatened by their husbands than girls who are married later.

'But in some villages in Rajasthan,

'there are small signs that things are getting better.

'Young girls are starting to stand up to their parents and are bravely saying "no" to child marriages.

'Roshan Barwa was 14 when she refused to be married off

'and with the help of her village youth group insisted on going to high school.

'This was a first, not just for her family, but for her whole village.'

When your family told you that they wanted you to get married, you said "no". How did that happen?

Have other girls followed your lead and refused child marriages as well?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

So what happened to the person that you were going to get married to?

LAUGHTER

Now that you might have a choice in who you want to marry, what are you looking for?

'Schooling is a way out of the trap.

'Girls who are educated are six times less likely to be child brides.

'Roshan's generation benefits from there being more government high schools in the villages.

'Without one nearby, she'd probably be married now.'

'I'm in Jaipur, Rajasthan's capital city. It's only five hours' drive from Roshan's village,

'but with all its cars, billboards and shops, I realise how much rural India is missing out

'on the country's booming economy.

'It's hard to imagine these Jaipur girls being married off as kids.

'Educated and middle-class, I wanted to know what these teenagers think

'about child marriages in villages down the road.'

What experience of child marriages do you have?

Actually, within a couple of kilometres

you can see a wide difference between the urban girls and village girls.

It's a totally different scene with rural girls.

One of my neighbours left her work and she went to her village where she belonged to

to get her daughter married who was just 13.

I just said to my mum, "Was she kidding or did she mean that?"

-You couldn't believe that?

-I couldn't believe that.

This is also a world that is existing apart from the one which I live in.

-What age do you guys want to get married at?

-Not before 25 or 26.

Obviously, after I finish my graduation and post-graduation

and I, you know, do something in life. Only then.

Does it come up in conversation with your friends or family?

In India, we have a really popular show called Balika Vadhu.

It's really, really popular and it's based on a story of child marriage and all of that,

so at dinner time I used to discuss about all this with my parents.

What's really strange is that I live in London, I come from Afghanistan,

and I'm more familiar with child marriages than you guys are

and it's not even five hours away from where you live.

It seems like there's two different Indias here -

a modern, urban one where girls can make the same choices as the boys,

but then there's the rural one in which that just doesn't happen.

'Balika Vadhu, the soap the girls tell me about, is a ground-breaking, prime-time daily show,

'dealing with child marriages head on, even if it is set in a fantasy Bollywood mansion.

'On set, I caught up with the lead actress Pratyusha Banerjee

'and the show's writer Gajra Kottary.'

When I went to Jaipur, I met some girls who were watching your show

and through it were being educated as to what a child marriage was.

They were completely unaware of it.

We have so many Indias within the country.

We have lives which are being led so differently, you know, sort of cheek by jowl in that sense.

And what the show has done

is to sensitise the urban Indian girls especially to what's happening around them.

Looking at your set and how beautiful your actresses are,

it's hard to believe this is what a child marriage is like. In the villages, it's completely different.

We've had people tuning in day after day for years on end.

I don't think we'd have been able to achieve that

if we had chosen to get very grimy and real about the whole thing,

so I'm completely unapologetic about the fact that we have used this sugar coating.

What's your character up to at the moment?

My husband is liking some other girl in Mumbai because he has become a doctor right now.

He's disowned me, he doesn't want me because he thinks I'm illiterate.

We met somebody in Rajasthan, Mamta, and she did get married very, very young.

She was beaten by her husband, her husband's family because she wasn't educated.

So the show actually ends up reflecting what I've seen taking place in these villages.

Actually, we take from real life all the time, all the time.

I remember one particularly impactful sequence

which was how this innocent child bride happens to give some bangles to a child widow whom she sees.

And that creates a huge hue and cry in the village

and the family is sort of chastised.

Therefore, the grandmother punishes this girl by putting her into a dark, dingy storeroom

where this girl spent a night, not knowing what crime she has committed.

That to me embodies the fact

that child marriage forces a child to become an adult when she is just not ready.

SOBBING

We went to see a child marriage and the girls weren't even ready till 20 minutes before the grooms came.

And they got dressed up, they sat down, they were yawning,

you know, as kids would do.

We actually had a sequence where Jagdish, that's the groom,

he goes to sleep, he's so tired.

This was symbolic to the fact that these kids do not know what is happening to them,

let alone the implications of what it means for the rest of their lives.

Could you imagine this show being successful ten years ago even?

Not the huge success that we have got today,

the reason being that India is going through a huge change at every level.

And we are much more ready today to sort of look into the mirror and figure out our flaws.

'It might have melodrama and glamour,

'but this show's success is proof child marriage is now openly discussed and challenged.

'But despite all the social changes, its surging economy

'and the slight fall in the number of child marriages, India still has a long way to go.

'Nearly half of all the girls here get married below 18,

'making it the 13th worst country in the world for child marriage.

'The sad fact is child marriage is also a massive international issue

'with even higher levels in other countries.

'There are at least 50 million married couples around the world who are children

'and this is set to double by the end of the decade.

'I want to go beyond what happens in India and see if it is different

'in countries where child marriage is an even bigger problem.'

I'm in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh.

Statistically, it's the worst country in Asia for child marriages

and one of the worst countries in the world too. I'm here to find out what makes it so bad

and to see how different child marriages are here compared to India.

'The first thing that hits me is that Dhaka looks so much poorer than the cities I've seen in India

'and this must make the people here more vulnerable.

'Two days before I arrived, the team managed to film a child marriage

'in a village five hours away from Dhaka.

'As female relatives rub a turmeric paste over her body to make her look radiant,

'13-year-old Furzina silently goes along with it.

'Child marriages are illegal in Bangladesh, too,

'and a charity worker makes a last-minute attempt to persuade family members not to go ahead,

'but their mind is made up.

'Furzina is the eldest of three daughters who lost their father a year ago.

'Financially, things are tough and there is no man in the house to protect them,

'so the family is keen to marry her off as soon as possible.

'The fact the groom is an adult means he's earning a regular wage and can look after his wife.

CHANTING

'At 13, Furzina is a bit older than the brides in Rajasthan

'and seems to know exactly what is going on.'

The system here is different from what I've seen in India

because she is going to be moving in with him tomorrow

and although in India there was a period of years before the couple started having sex,

here it would happen as soon as possible. And it's just...

worrying, really worrying

because in England, you know,

a 20-year-old man having sex with a 13-year-old girl

it's not only disgusting, it's also illegal.

Her lip is quivering. She looks worried, she looks anxious,

she can't even bring herself to say, "I accept."

She's standing next to a guy she barely knows and it's just so depressing

because that is not how I would want to look on my wedding day.

'Two out of every three girls in Bangladesh get married under the age of 18.

'Even though a third of teenagers in Britain have also had sex by that age, it's not acceptable

'within marriage like in Bangladesh.

'It's completely normal for an adult man to marry a young girl here.

'It's the same for my family in Afghanistan, but until now I'd never thought about

'what life is really like for these child brides.

'Seema is 14 years old. She got married when she was just 13 to a 19-year-old man.

'For the last year she's been having a full-on married life, living with her husband and his whole family.'

It would be an understatement to say that seeing the things I've seen haven't changed my opinion.

That would just be a complete lie. When I came into this,

I had sort of a very simplistic view of what a child marriage is

and I'd boiled it down to a wedding day, which is fun for everyone,

but...there's life after a child marriage, you know.

Not a good one, not one I would want for anybody.

'Seema's husband Shojib works as a barber.

'At 13, he saw her as a potential wife. Men here clearly don't see young girls as we do in the West.'

'Shojib is a bit cocky, but he's ultimately a decent guy

'whose opinions are totally normal for people here.

'The sad thing is I just don't think he really understands how difficult married life is for Seema.

'Her fears just aren't taken into consideration by anyone.

'I'm heading eight hours out of Dhaka to rural Sylhet.

'It has one of the highest rates of mothers dying during childbirth in Bangladesh.

'The government's massively reduced the number of maternal deaths,

'but it still has one of the worst rates in the world.

'Lukman gets by by selling the vegetables that he grows.

'Too poor to educate his sister Safia further, he decided to marry her off when she was just 12.

'By the time she was 14, she was fighting for her life giving birth to her first baby.'

Tell me about your sister Safia and what happened to her.

It was your decision to marry your sister off at that young an age.

But surely you must have heard about girls dying through childbirth because of their age?

So, tell me, after your sister passed,

what did her husband and his family do?

Do you think the fact that she had such a difficult labour and ultimately lost her life

was because she was so young and her body could not cope?

But that's because she was young. That's because she was 14 years old

and didn't have a clue what was happening to her and these people took advantage.

She's a pretty girl! Mashallah!

This is all you have? One picture?

And this is after the marriage so not long before she passed away.

She's very beautiful.

I mean, he was both the culprit and the victim at the same time.

He's the one that handed her away

and he's the one that carried her to clinic, hospital, pharmacy,

the whole day that she was basically dying.

And you could just feel the pain in him and see it in his eyes,

how much he regretted what he did.

And up until now I never saw that.

I just didn't think that the fathers, the brothers, the uncles ever felt for what they were doing.

But this is a guilt he has to live with for the rest of his life.

'Even if a child bride survives early childbirth, she can still have a terrible medical condition.

'It's called obstetric fistula and leaves you permanently incontinent.

'If a girl's pelvis has not grown big enough for her to give birth,

'her labour can go on for too long and cause a tear in her bladder or rectum.

'At the country's National Fistula Centre, Dr Iffat Ara has been treating women with this illness

'for over 20 years.

'70,000 girls a year in Bangladesh develop this awful condition

'and even though treatment at government hospitals is free, only a tiny number of girls

'ever find out that they can be cured. Today, 15-year-old Jusna is finally being operated on.'

She got married very early, at about 13 or 14 years of age.

And then she became pregnant and had no ante-natal check-up.

Ultimately, when the labour pains started, the traditional birth attendant was there two whole days.

The baby died. A dead female baby was delivered.

She started dribbling urine after seven days.

So now she has been abandoned by her husband, she has lost her baby,

she's with this horrible condition suffering for eight long months.

'The surgery is complicated and can often take up to 9 hours,

'depending on how easy it is to repair the hole in the bladder.'

So the operation is finished.

It was a very complicated surgery.

Hopefully, we think that after 21 days she might be cured and she can have a better life,

but the most important thing is that this whole process,

this whole operation, could have been prevented

by simply marrying at a later age. By marrying late, she would have grown a better-sized pelvis

and, most important, so much agony and misery could have been ended by a simple C-section.

'But preventing this illness costs money.

'Only girls who can afford to get to a maternity hospital have any hope of a Caesarean to prevent it.

'Worse still, in 90% of cases, the baby is usually still-born because of the long labour.

'Kiranmala is only 15.

'Once a hard-working schoolgirl, now her husband's abandoned her.

'It was an uncle in Dhaka who brought her here to be treated.'

'Jusna is in the post-operation recovery ward.

'She has to wait three weeks to find out if she's well again.

'She may have to have more surgery.'

These girls don't enjoy sex, they don't do it because they want to.

They are forced to do it. They are in this mess with no way out.

It's just like at every given opportunity, at every impasse, their road is blocked ahead of them.

They can't seek contraception without their husband's allowance,

they can't expect a life where they choose not to get pregnant.

These things are not even in their dreams. They can't even have it as an option.

'40% of Bangladeshis live below the poverty line,

'so the priority in many families is to get a girl married off to a man who can financially support her,

'regardless of his age.

'This is done as soon as possible before there is any chance of her getting a bad reputation.

'Getting an education in the hope of a better life is a long shot

'when even enough food isn't guaranteed.

'The solution for some girls is getting a job in the country's booming garment industry

'which employs over 2 million women.

'When Munni's family tried to marry her off at the age of 12,

'earning a wage sewing clothes gave her the strength to refuse.'

When you said, "No!" to your family,

what was their reaction to you standing up for yourself?

What gave you the confidence to go against what your entire village

and your mum and dad were saying?

What were you afraid of about a child marriage?

How many hours do you work and how many days in a week?

Some people would say that that's quite a lot of hours to work since you were 13.

What's the best bit about, you know, being an independent girl and having your own wage?

The money you make from your work, is that enough to support you and your family?

They want you to be independent and earn money. Before, they wanted you married off! They're on your side.

Wow. Amazing.

You'll have to find someone! It's going to be difficult.

You'll find someone in Bangladesh!

No, there's nothing to worry about.

'Meeting Munni today was such an inspiration, a breath of fresh air

'compared to the girls I've met so far.'

Due to their child marriages, those girls had no expression on their faces,

they hadn't had time to even develop personalities. But by having a job,

Munni has been able to lift herself out of that

and have this independence, this vivacious character that is really admirable.

It might be difficult to imagine that a 40-hour job for a girl who has been doing it since she was 13

is a good thing, but given the circumstances - have a job or get married -

this is the lesser of two evils.

'I started out this journey with an open mind

'because I thought child marriages in my family were happy,

'but when I asked them, every child bride I met wished she had married older.

'The only inspiring experiences were where the girls had the courage to say no.

'But young girls are rarely heard because it's adult men with the real power,

'the fathers and brothers who are convinced they are doing the right thing.

'Until the laws banning child marriages are strongly enforced,

'young girls will remain vulnerable.'

THEY SING

Subtitles by Subtext for Red Bee Media Ltd - 2011

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