“I had three kids. Two died. Only one is alive,” Kamala Kumari Pariyar told Human Rights Watch, sitting in the shade outside her home in Nepal’s southern Terai region. Kamala married at age 13.
She attended school to class three but then dropped out. “My father used to be a fisherman,” she said. “Sometimes we had fish and sometimes we had none, so it was difficult for me to buy notebooks and pencils. So I left school to work.”
Kamala* began working at age 10 as a domestic servant in the home of a wealthier family. Three years later, she had developed a chronic condition in her hands as a result of the work, so her parents told her to leave that job.
Kamala feared her father, who had developed a drinking problem, would send her somewhere else to work that could be more dangerous. She saw marriage to a childhood friend as a means of escape, and her father and brother agreed to the match. She became pregnant almost immediately; her husband and mother-in-law wanted her to have a child.
Read a text description of this video
OPENING:
[FOOTAGE GIRLS IN THE PARK]
TESTIMONY SHARMILA G.:
I used to imagine that life would just go by laughing and playing.
But now, there’s no laughter.
TITLE:
OUR TIME TO SING & PLAY
Child Marriage in Nepal
TESTIMONY SHARMILA G.:
I’m 14 years old.
I’ve been married for a year and a half.
When I see my friends going to school, I wish I could go with them.
And I wonder why I got married so soon.
TEXT ON SCREEN (TOS):
Married at 12
Married at 16
Married at 15
Married at 14
Married at 15
Married at 12
Married at 15
VOICEOVER
Nepal has the third highest rate of child marriage in Asia. 37 percent of girls marry before they’re 18, and 10 percent before 15, despite the fact that the legal age of marriage is 20.
Why are so many girls married?
LOWER THIRD:
SUMNIMA TULADHAR
Executive Coordinator
Child Workers in Nepal
TESTIMONY SUMNIMA:
The society is structured in a way that gives women status of second-class citizen in most of the South Asian countries. They are viewed as economically inactive citizens. Families are happy to marry them off because what will they bring?
LOWER THIRD:
VOICE OF MANJUSHREE THAPA
Writer & Activist
VOICEOVER
Girls are often seen as a “burden.” Families, struggling to get by, send girls to work. And then they unload them through marriage.
(TOS):
CHILD LABOR
LOWER THIRD:
CHILD WORKER
9 years old
TESTIMONY SELINA T.:
I help my mom with her work.
I put the bricks in a heap.
I make tea and shape the bricks.
VOICEOVER
Child labor is common in Nepal, with about 40% of children working. Girls are more likely to work than boys (TOS 48% VS. 36%) and most of the children in hazardous work are girls.
TOS [60%]
LOWER THIRD:
CHILD BRIDE
Married at 14
TESTIMONY ANJANA M.:
I wanted to study, but my parents didn’t let me go to school.
They just sent me away from them.
Men came to take me [to work as a maid] but I cried and said, “I don’t want to go, I want to stay home.”
But my father had already taken 3000 rupees [28 USD] for me, so I had to go.
VOICEOVER
Girls who work often have to leave school. And once they leave school, they’re more likely to get married.
TOS: BARRIERS TO EDUCATION
VOICEOVER
What keeps girls out of school? Child labor, domestic burdens, boys being prioritized over girls, and poverty.
TOS:
CHILD LABOR
DOMESTIC BURDENS
BOYS PRIORITIZED OVER GIRLS
POVERTY
LOWER THIRD:
CHILD BRIDE
Married at 15
TESTIMONY KALPANA T.:
I lived with [and was raised by] my grandparents. I used to study but we had [financial] problems.
So I had to get married.
Even if the education is free, we have to buy books, pencils, uniforms.
Of course it was costly
so we couldn’t afford it.
I thought if I got married, it would help my grandparents a little.
After I left home, there would be a little more [for them] to eat.
VOICEOVER
Rumors and gossip can have life altering consequences.
TOS: SOCIAL PRESSURE
TESTIMONY ANJANA M.:
I didn’t care much for boys. I didn’t even want to get married.
Then girls from the village started teasing me [suggesting I was in a relationship with a man in the village].
So I started to cry.
There were too many rumors, so I told him I would marry him.
I didn’t have any options.
VOICEOVER
With a dearth of options, children are choosing to get married on their own, some as young as 12 or 13. In Nepal, these unions are called love marriages and they’re on the rise. Often, they’re born of desperation – children are looking for a way out of abuse or poverty at home, hard labor, or an arranged marriage.
LOWER THIRD:
CHILD BRIDE
Married at 14
TESTIMONY TILMAYA M.:
[My parents] told me not to marry him. They told me to marry somebody else from another village.
They berated me.
That’s why we eloped.
VOICEOVER
Whether it’s a forced child marriage or a love marriage, the damage to the lives of girls and their families is often the same.
LOWER THIRD:
CHILD BRIDE
Married at 12
TESTIMONY SHARMILA G.:
I’m pregnant now.
Seven months.
I’m still a child and I’m pregnant so I feel strange.
I didn’t know anything about babies, how they’re conceived, I had no idea.
LOWER THIRD:
CHILD BRIDE
Married at 12
TESTIMONY LALITA B.:
I had three children but two of them died. This is the third one.
[The doctor] told me it was because I was too young, my body couldn’t handle pregnancy.
They said, “Your uterus is small.”
I don’t want what happened to me to happen to [my daughter].
My life is destroyed. I hope it will turn out differently for her.
TESTIMONY KALPANA T.:
When I see my friends going to school,
I wish I could go to school too,
to study more, to stand on my own feet,
to do something [with my life].
VOICEOVER
Education and empowerment shouldn’t be a distant dream for girls in Nepal.
LOWER THIRD:
YASODHA MAJHI
Student
19 years old
TESTIMONY YASODHA:
People think that girls can’t do anything.
But once we’re educated we’d be equal to [boys].
They wouldn’t be able to oppress us for being girls and say that we’re not equal to them.
LOWER THIRD:
MOHNA ANSARI
National Human Rights Commission
TESTIMONY MOHNA:
Nepal has the best law [on child marriage] in South Asia,
but now is the time to look at how well it’s being enforced.
We must enforce it.
VOICEOVER
Nepal’s government promises reforms, but in towns and villages across the country, change is coming far too slowly. The government needs to come up with a real plan, and quickly, before more children see their futures stolen from them by child marriage.
Kamala’s story is all too common. In Nepal, 37 percent of girls marry before age 18, and 10 percent before they turn 15. Boys also often marry as children in Nepal, though in smaller numbers.
Child marriage in Nepal is driven by a many factors, but chief among them is gender discrimination.
Girls are seen as a burden for their families, in part because convention dictates that girls go to live with and contribute to their husband’s family, while boys stay with and support parents through their old age.
As a result, girls are more likely than boys to be denied education. Girls are more likely to be kept home to do domestic work, rather than study. As they grow up, families may seek to unload girls through marriage.
Poverty increases the risk. Parents who are unable to feed their children, or pay for their education costs, may seek a husband for their daughters simply so that the girls can eat.
In interviews for a new report, “Our Time to Sing and Play: Child Marriage in Nepal,” Human Rights Watch documented how girls are disproportionately likely to be sent out to undertake paid labor, at ages as young as 6. Poor girls lack access to education because they are obliged to work instead of going to school, but also because their families cannot afford associated costs for uniforms, pencil, notebooks, etcetera, even when tuition is free. The government does little to ensure that children actually attend school.
Social pressures, include an expectation in some communities, especially traditionally marginalized ones, that girls should marry soon after they begin menstruating, or even before. This makes child marriage not only accepted but expected in some communities. Lack of access to information about sexual and reproductive health, and access to contraceptive supplies, puts children at risk of a rushed marriage in response to, or in fear of, extramarital pregnancy.
The number of children being married off by their families is gradually falling in Nepal. But there are signs that a growing number of children, like Kamala, are themselves choosing child marriage — sometimes — as a way of coping with dire circumstances.
The harm caused by child marriage is well known. Married children usually drop out of school. Married girls often become pregnant quickly — and are expected to do so. Many suffer serious health consequences as a result of early and closely-spaced pregnancies. Their children also often suffer serious health consequences; infant mortality is more prevalent in cases of early pregnancy. Research globally shows that girls who marry younger are at greater risk of domestic violence, and many of the girls we interviewed described violence and rape they suffered in their marital homes.
There is a unique window of opportunity right now to reduce child marriage in Nepal and elsewhere. Under the new U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, launched at the beginning of 2016, countries around the world have pledged to end child marriage by 2030. The issue is receiving growing attention and growing funding. The Nepal government promised to meet the target of ending child marriage by 2030, and has started developing a plan for reaching that goal.
But progress is much too slow. Ending child marriage will take a lot of work. It will require the Nepal government to strengthen and enforce its own law which makes child marriage a crime. The government will need to figure out how to keep children in school, and end harmful child labor. Nepal’s schools should do better at teaching children about family planning, and its government health services need to do more to offer adolescents access to contraception.
None of this is impossible, but none of it is easy. The government spent several years developing a strategy on child marriage that lays out some good ideas, but it lacks the detail needed to launch work on the ground. A detailed plan is in its earliest stages and moving slowly.
It’s time for a more urgent effort to end child marriage in Nepal. 2030 will be here in a flash, and girls like Kamala have no time to wait.
*not her real name
