A recent diplomatic omission that did not receive the media attention it deserved was India’s failure to co-sponsor a global resolution floated by the UN Human Rights Council against child marriages. The resolution, which sought to include child, early and forced marriages in post-2015 international development agenda, was co-sponsored by a cross-regional group of 107 nations, many of them poor and developing countries where such marriages are common.

India, which has the dubious distinction of hosting the largest number of child brides — 24 million, which is 40 per cent of the 60 million worldwide — blamed extreme poverty for the prevalence of child marriages and argued that the practice should be allowed to die a natural death by removing its root cause, that is poverty. Surprisingly, India also sought clarity on the term ‘child, early and forced marriage’ even as the resolution sought to outlaw the marriage of girls aged below 18 years, which is also the legal age for girl’s marriage in India.

The wrangle over semantics and the stand taken by India at the UN forum have touched a raw nerve in Kerala, where the issue has been raging for months. Some orthodox Muslim organisations are planning to move the Supreme Court to get exemption for Muslim girls from the purview of Child Marriage Law in order to enable them to get married before attaining 18 years.

Read More: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blogs/blog-rknair/the-politics-of-child-marriage/article5247403.ece

India, which has more child brides than any nation in the world, has decided not to co-sponsor a United Nations initiative to end child marriage.

The proposal — the first ever U.N. Human Rights Council resolution against the practice of child, early and forced marriages — has already been co-sponsored by 107 other countries on multiple continents. Adopted Sept. 27 in New York, the motion recognizes child marriage as a human rights violation and pledges to eliminate the practice, as part of the U.N.’s post-2015 global development agenda.

India reportedly refused to sponsor the measure because of the resolution’s vague definition of “early marriage,” The Hindustan Times reports. “Since early marriage has not been defined anywhere, there was no clarity on the legal implication” of co-sponsoring the resolution, an Indian government official said, per the Times.

But some say that’s the wrong move for the South Asian country. “Early marriage cuts short [girls’] education, places them at risk of domestic abuse and marital rape, and makes them economically dependent,” Human Rights Watch South Asia director Meenakshi Ganguly told TIME. Although the legal age for marriage in India is 18, its 24 million underage child bridesconstitute nearly half of all child brides in the world, according to The Times of India.

Read More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/16/india-child-marriage-un-resolution-sponsor_n_4108408.html?utm_hp_ref=world#

Girls all over the world are being deprived of their childhoods by being forced into early marriages. Who can forget the video released this summer of Nada al-Ahdal, the 11-year-old who escaped a forced union in Yemen. Nada told the world she’d “rather die” than live her life bound to the older man her parents had chosen for her.

In the U.K., the government and other organizations tried to raise awareness about the issue as school let out for summer break, the season when many parents take their children abroad to oblige them to wed. Girls who suspected as much were encouraged to place metal spoons in their underwear to attract the attention of airport security who could help lead them to safety.

Another step toward emphasizing the importance of protecting young girls from heinous acts such as these is the United Nations’ International Day of the Girl Child, celebrated on Oct. 11. In honor of this day, global human rights group Breakthrough released a statement regarding forced marriage in India.

Read more: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/60_million_underage_girls_forced_to_marry_20131010?ln

Sara Batuk was forced into marriage in Turkey by her father when she was still a teenager – only for him to rescue her four years later when he could see the appalling abuse she suffered.

Whether they’re kicking a football to one another in the park or poring over a pile of schoolbooks at the kitchen table, my father and my son are rarely apart. But the painful truth about Dad’s great devotion to his grandson is that it is born out of a mixture of love and the most terrible guilt. Ali was born in Turkey in 2003. He is the only good thing to come out of the four years I spent there being repeatedly raped, beaten and bullied by the animal dressed up as a man that my father forced me to marry.

The marriage was supposed to protect me from the ways of the western world I was born into. Dad remained deeply suspicious of those ways, despite having lived in London by then for 25 years himself. Instead, it became a brutal exercise in endurance, leaving me so emotionally and physically battered that at one point I saw killing myself as my only way out. In the end, my liberation came in a far less likely form: my dad came back and rescued me. Two of my life’s most enduring memories come from weddings in Turkey. At the first, I am a little girl. I can picture myself now, huddled with my cousins under a table swathed in red silk and heaving with food, eating baklava as we observe the grownups from the feet up as they dance before us.

The ebbing heat, the loud music, the laughter and a general sense of excitement at two young people starting out on a new life together fills me with happiness. Despite being only 11 at the time, somehow I know things will be very different for me when I get married myself. My uncle’s wedding had been gently arranged, which is how it was then for traditional families such as mine living in Turkey. The happy couple had met on a blind date, set up by their respective parents, and got on well. After six months of chaperoned meetings. they announced their engagement. But as a girl born, raised and schooled in London, I took it as read that it would be me introducing any prospective husband to my parents; not the other way around.

Read More: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/12/dad-forced-marriage-saved-me-turkey

FORCED MARRIAGE CHARITY “FREEDOM” SEND OPEN LETTER TO  MICHAEL GOVE URGING FIGURES TO BE MADE AVAILABLE ON
HOW MANY CHILDREN EXPECTED BACK AT SCHOOL AFTER  THE SUMMER HOLIDAY FAIL TO RETURN

4th October, 2013: Freedom Charity is urging the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, to collate and make publicly available figures on how many children due to return to school after the summer holiday, fail to appear.

The summer holiday is the key time when young people are taken abroad to be forced into marriage yet Freedom Charity have been unable to find out (via a Freedom of Information request) how many empty chairs there are in classrooms around the country at the beginning of the Autumn Term.

Please find, below, Freedom Charity’s letter to Mr Gove:

The Rt Hon Michael Gove MP,
Secretary of State for Education.

3rd October 2013

Dear Mr Gove,

We would be grateful if you could address as a matter of urgency the fact that it appears to be impossible to find out how many children expected back at school after the summer holiday (2013) have failed to return.

Freedom Charity work to protect the lives of children and young people by raising awareness of forced marriage in the UK. The summer holiday is a key time when children are taken abroad, often thinking they will be going to a relative’s wedding, only to find it is their own. These children will be kept abroad against their will and subjected to rape and other forms of physical and mental abuse.

Read more:http://www.sourcewire.com/news/79923/forced-marriage-freedom-charity-urge-michael-gove-to-track-missing