Child Marriage

Award-winning photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair  has documented child marriages around the world – Afghanistan, Ethiopia, India, Nepal and Yemen. Her latest work appears in the June issue of National Geographic and on the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting website. Sinclair talks to ICRW about her photography and why she’s optimistic that telling child brides’ stories is helping curb the practice. Sinclair responded to our questions by email.

ICRW: How and when did you stumble upon this traditional practice of child marriage, and what has kept you committed to telling this story?

SS: I started this project on child marriage in 2003, after meeting several girls who had set themselves on fire in Herat, Afghanistan. I noticed that many of the girls who had done this had been married at very young ages, in many cases as prepubescent children. This fact seemed to link many of these girls and this intense act of desperation. I felt a responsibility to research and document whatever it was that would make these girls set themselves on fire. As a reportage photographer, I also felt it necessary to actually witness and document these weddings to prove to the public that this is indeed happening. However, only attending and documenting these events was incredibly difficult for me personally, and as a result, I made a silent pledge to the girls that I would give everything I had to sharing their experiences and voices with the world.  

ICRW: Your images – including those in the current issue of National Geographic – depict young girls alongside their much older husbands and girls wailing in protest as they’re about to be married. These are extremely powerful. Why do you think a practice that is clearly so heartbreaking and that has many tragic consequences for girls, continues?

SS: I have always maintained that most parents do not want to hurt their children. However, the practice continues for many reasons - the main cause being gender disparity. While the boy children are celebrated, the girls are often seen as burdens, resulting in less care for their futures. Other reasons include poverty, cultural traditions and lack of education and development in those communities. It is controversial to say, but I have also found that every culture finds some justification in their religion, and that includes Hinduism, Christianity as well as Islam. 

ICRW: What steps did you take to gain access to these girls’ lives? And what insights – if any – did you learn about how their families and communities see child marriage?

SS: I always worked closely with the members of these communities. I found that many people, while they were against the practice, did not have the power to stop it, so they helped me with the project. I have tried hard to walk the line of not being too judgmental while maintaining a firm message that this practice is harmful not just to the girls (and sometimes boys) but to the societies as a whole. 

ICRW: Despite the high prevalence of child marriage in these communities, do you see reasons for optimism?

SS: Absolutely. One thing that became very clear was that the more communication these societies had with the outside world via roads, radio, etc., the more likely they were not to engage in this practice. I have also witnessed nongovernmental organizations’ campaigns finally reaching some of these rural communities, something that did not exist when I started this project eight years ago. 

ICRW: What surprised you the most during the time in which you documented this piece for National Geographic?

SS: I was most surprised at how incredibly prevalent child marriage is in Yemen. The practice there went way beyond socio-economic factors and it is quite common to see prepubescent girls getting married to much older men. The conservative culture also makes it especially difficult to create change. For instance, there are very few schools in the rural areas and many of the girls who do get this opportunity must stop their educations early because families don't want pubescent girls to attend a class taught by a male teacher. If you can't educate girls past an early age, then it will be hard to find adult women qualified to be teachers. It is an especially vicious cycle. 

How You Can Help Support our efforts to end child marriage.

The practice of families forcing their daughters to marry as children – sometimes when they’re as young as 8 years old – is common in the poorest parts of many low- to middle-income countries. In India, child marriage is illegal, but still occurs, and has declined only modestly over the past 15 years. The country remains among the top hot spots for the practice that robs girls of an education and, essentially, their childhood.

ICRW’s latest work is part of a long commitment to studying the causes and consequences of child marriage. The organization also is a leader in identifying solutions that will eliminate the traditional practice. ICRW’s current project in that vein will assess Apni Beti, Apna Dhan (ABAD) – which translates as “Our Daughter, Our Wealth” – one of the first “conditional cash transfer” programs the Indian government implemented specifically to delay girls’ marriages.

Under a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, governments or agencies provide regular payments to poor families, but only based on certain conditions. Most CCTs target behaviors related to health and education by, for example, requiring families to keep their children in school or fully vaccinating their children to receive the cash transfer. The programs are a growing phenomenon across the developing world and increasingly are viewed as a potential solution to poverty and its related problems, such as illiteracy and poor health. They also have been lauded for reducing economic inequalities, halting generational poverty and providing women – who often receive the payments – more decision-making power at home.

First implemented in Latin America, CCTs can be found today in more than two dozen developing countries, with programs operating nationally, regionally or for a specific population, according to the World Bank. Two of the largest and most successful CCTs are Brazil’s Bolsa Familia, which serves 11 million families, or a quarter of the population; and Mexico’s Oportunidades, which covers about 6 million families, or some 30 percent of the population. In both programs, eligible families receive monthly cash transfers if they meet certain conditions focused on health and education outcomes.

Currently there also are CCT programs in several developed countries. This includes New York City’s Opportunity NYC, a 3-year pilot cash transfer program – the first initiated in the United States. An initial evaluation of the program garnered mixed reviews.

How India’s Program Works

ABAD, however, is different than most CCTs worldwide.

The program began in 1994 in the northern state of Haryana as an economic incentive to delay girls’ marriage and change how parents view their daughters, who are traditionally undervalued in Indian society. ABAD is unique because of its end-goal, and because the participating families – all of whom live below the poverty level or are from marginalized caste groups – don’t receive cash deposits regularly.

“No other CCT in any other country has this focus of delaying marriage,” said ICRW’s Anju Malhotra, an expert on child marriage and adolescent girls. “This program was designed in part to also change the sex ratio in India; it’s an incentive to encourage parents to value their daughters.”

Here’s how ABAD works: Upon the birth of a daughter – she has to be the first, second or third child in the family – mothers are entitled to receive 500 rupees (about $11) within 15 days of the birth to cover post-delivery needs. The government also invests 2,500 rupees (about $55) in a long-term savings bond in the girl’s name, which can be cashed out for a guaranteed total of 25,000 rupees (about $550) after the girl turned 18 – but only if she isn't married.

ABAD’s initial participants who enrolled in 1994, will celebrate their 18^th birthdays next year. It will be the first opportunity to assess whether the cash incentive motivated parents enough to hold off on having their daughters marry.

That’s where ICRW comes in. For its evaluation, ICRW experts will survey the girls and their parents who participated in ABAD – and those who didn’t – to compare their attitudes about child marriage as well as determine whether the girls delayed marriage. Researchers also will analyze government records and data related to the program. The process kicked off last fall with project team members contacting government officials to confirm that they will be on board with the evaluation. Come September, ICRW will begin its qualitative survey of families.

“We have evidence that conditional cash transfer programs are very effective in keeping girls in school and getting them immunized, but we don’t yet have proof that this strategy works for preventing marriage,” said ICRW’s Pranita Achyut, the program manager for the ABAD project. “If Haryana state’s approach proves to be valuable, it could potentially be scaled up to make a significant difference in many more girls’ lives – and not only in India.”

ICRW’s Efforts to Prevent Child Marriage

Indeed, ICRW is focused on finding ways to expand the few proven methods that prevent child marriage. It comes after more than a decade of working on the issue.

The organization first started addressing adolescent girls’ well-being in the mid-1990s, and by the latter part of the decade, ICRW was part of two major projects – one in India, the other in Nepal – concentrated on improving girls’ reproductive health. In the midst of that work, Malhotra said she and her colleagues noticed that girls were giving birth very early in their lives and suffering health complications from it. Most of the girls had been forced to marry at a very young age.

That’s when ICRW started working on the ground to document the consequences of child marriage and figure out how to prevent it. Malhotra said that at the time, Population Council was the only other organization doing the same. “ICRW and Population Council have been the stalwarts on this issue for a long time, working in and alongside communities,” she said. “Before, people were only interested in delaying marriage from a policy perspective, from a macro, population level.”

Over the last decade, several organizations have turned their attention to the issue, including the Packard Foundation, CARE and Save the Children, among others.

ICRW’s research evidence shows that preventing child marriage requires arming girls with information – about how their bodies work, what sex is, how to make sound, healthy decisions – while simultaneously educating their community and creating an environment in which alternatives to early marriage are supported. “What we’re finding now is that this combination of information works. Girls do delay marriage. People’s attitudes do change,” Malhotra said. “But what we’ve been thinking for the last two to three years is, ‘Well, this is great, but it’ll take a really long time if we do this community by community.’”

With that, ICRW experts are concentrating on how best to replicate and grow programs that have been effective in preventing child marriage. India’s CCT effort may well be one of the success stories.

“We want to look at solutions to eliminate child marriage that are on scale and sustainable, rather than just a flash in the pan,” Malhotra said. “We want to examine infrastructure, incentives, government schemes – things that will work not just once, but many times, to the benefit of millions of girls.”

Gillian Gaynair is ICRW’s writer and editor.