{"id":1978,"date":"2005-11-28T06:45:01","date_gmt":"2005-11-28T13:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/11\/28\/african-girl-brides-traded-like-cattle\/"},"modified":"2005-11-28T06:45:01","modified_gmt":"2005-11-28T13:45:01","slug":"african-girl-brides-traded-like-cattle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1978","title":{"rendered":"African Girl Brides Traded Like Cattle"},"content":{"rendered":"

From an article in the New York Times<\/em><\/a>:\n\n

In villages throughout northern Malawi, girls are often married at or before puberty to whomever their fathers choose, sometimes to husbands as much as half a century older. Many of those same girls later choose lifelong misery over divorce because custom decrees that children in patriarchal tribes belong to the father.<\/p>\n

In interviews, fathers and daughters here unapologetically explained the rationales for forced, intergenerational unions.<\/p>\n

Uness Nyambi, of the village of Wiliro, said she was betrothed as a child so her parents could finance her brother’s choice of a bride. Now about 17, she has two children, the oldest nearly 5, and a husband who guesses he is 70. “Just because of these two children, I can not leave him,” she said.<\/p>\n

Beatrice Kitamula, 19, was forced to marry her wealthy neighbor, now 63, five years ago because her father owed another man a cow. “I was the sacrifice,” Ms. Kitamula said, holding back tears. She likened her husband’s comfortable compound of red brick houses in Ngana village to a penitentiary. “When you are in prison,” she said, “you have no rights.”<\/p>\n

In tiny Sele, Lyson Morenga, a widower, financed his re-marriage two years ago by giving his daughter Rachel, then 12, to a 50-year-old acquaintance in exchange for a black bull, according to his new in-laws. Mr. Morenga delivered the bull to his new wife’s family as a partial payment, said his wife’s uncle, Stewart Simkonda. Mr. SImkonda said Mr. Morenga had promised to deliver a larger payment after the impending marriage of Rachel’s younger sister.<\/p>\n

Malawi government officials say they try hard to protect girls like Rachel. Legislation before Parliament would raise the minimum age for marriage to 18, the legal age in most countries. Currently, marriages of Malawian girls from 15 to 18 are legal with the parents’ consent. Women’s rights advocates say they welcome the proposal, even though its effect would be limited because many marriages here, like much of the sub-Saharan region, take place under traditional customs, not civil law. […]<\/p>\n

Malawi officials say that this region’s growing poverty, worsened by AIDS and recent crop-killing drought, has put even more young girls at risk of forced marriage.<\/p>\n

“This practice has been there for a long time, but it is getting worse now because there is desperation,” said Penston Kilembe, Malawi’s director of social welfare services. “It is particularly prevalent in communities that have been hard hit by famine. Households that can no longer fend for themselves opt to sell off their children to wealthier households.”<\/p>\n

“The gains which were made in addressing early marriages are being lost,” said Andrina Mchiela, principal secretary for the Ministry of Gender.<\/p>\n

Women’s rights advocates want to abolish marriage payments, or lobolo, saying they create a financial incentive for parents to marry off their daughters. But even the advocates describe the tradition as politically untouchable.<\/p>\n

In its most benign form, lobolo is a token of appreciation from the groom’s family to the bride’s. At its most egregious, it turns girls into the human equivalent of cattle. In much of northern Malawi, lobolo negotiations are typically all-male discussions of down payments, installments, settlements and the occasional refund for a wife who runs off.<\/p><\/div>\n

The entire article<\/a> is worth reading.<\/pracut>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From an article in the New York Times: In villages throughout northern Malawi, girls are often married at or before puberty to whomever their fathers choose, sometimes to husbands as much as half a century older. Many of those same … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-issues","category-rape-intimate-violence-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}