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Posts Tagged ‘syria’

The girls who escaped ISIS – but still became child brides: Pictures of the tragic refugees who were forced to marry because their families can’t afford to keep them

Syrian girls as young as nine are being forced to marry men double their age to escape war and poverty in their homeland.

Pregnant mother-of-one Marwa, 15, was just 12 years old when she wed her husband, now 23, because her father could no longer afford to look after his large family.

And Rukayya, who is just 14 years old, was given a teddy bear as an engagement gift ahead of her own nuptials. They are just two of a whole generation of Syrian girls living in a makeshift camp in Hawsh el Harimi, which ironically means ‘place of women’, in Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, who have become child brides.

Photographer Laura Aggio Caldon, who is based in Italy, travelled to the village last year to document the girls’ distressing stories.

She said the marriages, caused by Syria’s civil war, are creating a ‘lost generation’, CNN reports. Writing on her website, Ms Caldon said: ‘Early marriages were practiced even before the Syrian crisis, but the impoverishment of families, poor security and the war have facilitated the rise of this phenomenon.

‘Marriages in refugee camps in Lebanon often involve girls of 11 to 13 years, and extreme cases of girls as young as nine years old.

‘Parents often give economic reasons and security to explain what pushes them into marrying off their daughters.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3493143/The-refugees-forced-child-brides-Portraits-tragic-girls-fled-ISIS-married-age-NINE.html#ixzz43BD7K3pX
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When girls become wives to escape war

Forced marriages and child brides may sound far-fetched in Europe. A true story from the Netherlands dispels this notion. Women’s aid organizations expect that Germany will soon be confronted with these issues.

On the photo the Dutch police is using to find her, Fatema wears a chic, leopard-print headscarf. She gazes seriously and defiantly at the camera, just like any other girl at her age. But Fatema is not a normal teenager. The 14-year-old is married and had her first child roughly two months ago.

Ever since August 31, the young Syrian woman and her husband, ten years her senior, have dropped off the authorities’ radar. The couple arrived in the Netherlands via Germany this summer and was housed in the refugee reception center in Ter Apel. Soon thereafter, Fatema did not appear for an appointment at the hospital. Dutch authorities believe that she has already been taken out of the country.

The child bride case in the heart of Europe has caused a stir. Dutch politician Attje Kuiken reacted by tweeting an appeal to put a stop to the practice as she finds it inacceptable. Children must be allowed to be children, she said.

Read Morehttp://www.dw.com/en/when-girls-become-wives-to-escape-war/a-18805240

Child marriage for Syria refugees on the rise

BBC speaks to child brides who say their wedding day “was a sad day”

Child marriage is on the rise in refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon housing the growing stream of refugees from Syria, recent UN reports revealed.

A report from last year by the UN Children’s Rights and Emergency Relief Organization showed that a quarter of marriages that take place in the refugee camps involve girls under the age of 18.

The BBC recently spoke to some of these young brides in the Zaatari Camp, many of which are already mothers.

One young girl who was carrying an infant called her wedding day “a sad day”. “I did not want to get married at this age,” she said.

Another girl, donning a black hijab, told the BBC that she was 14 when she had to marry a 50-year-old man from Kuwait.

She says that “Everyone was telling me to smile or laugh but my feeling was fear, from the moment we got engaged.”

 

Read More: http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/middle-east/41108-140822-child-marriage-for-syria-refugees-on-the-rise

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