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A New App is Working to End Child Marriage

end child marriage

It is entirely possible to end child marriage in the coming decades. Ending child marriage will also lead to more prosperous and responsible communities that are capable of overcoming global challenges, such as poverty.

Adolescence is a critical time that should allow girls opportunities to learn, grow, and decide their futures. However, that will not be the fate of more than 700 million girls who are alive today that were forced into marriage before they were 18.

For these girls, their marriage effectively ended their potential to contribute to their community, interrupted their schooling, and placed them at increased risk of severe domestic violence.

Every day, 37,000 girls under the age of 18 are forced into child marriage worldwide. One in three are in India. There have been many efforts to end child marriage in India, and the country has seen quality achievements. Government programs have been able to reduce child marriage from 47% in 2006 to 27% in 2016. This number is still alarmingly high.

The national and state governments, along with United Nations agencies and civil society organizations, are implementing new initiatives to right the social evils of child marriage and gender inequality. In Bihar, the chief minister himself is steering the launch of a statewide campaign against the deep-rooted harmful practices of child marriage.

In support of Bihar’s upcoming campaign, Gender Alliance — a network of 234 like-minded civil society organizations in the state —launched a high-tech tool to end child marriage in the form of a mobile application called Bandhan Tod, which means “break your shackles.”

Bandhan Tod launched in September 2017 and is available on the Google Playstore. The app has many unique features that will help girls stand up against child marriage. Bandhan Tod is a holistic solution for addressing the interlinked issues that perpetuate child marriage. The app offers free education on child marriage and the laws against it, inspirational messages to boost confidence and information on government programs that provide support and opportunities for gender empowerment.

The app also features an SOS button that instantly notifies the entire network of Gender Alliance members when a girl needs urgent help to stop a child marriage.

In order to evaluate the app’s success, Bandhan Tod’s design includes features to measure outreach, impact and changes in knowledge through automatic mapping of geographical location, age, and gender. This feature does not compromise confidentiality and will ultimately advance the ability of the app to contribute in large part to the programs working to end child marriage.

Bandhan Tod received a little over 1,000 downloads in the first week after its launch. Engagement within the app is also a huge success: “the average time spent on the app from people is generally around 7 minutes per session with an average of 100 sessions daily,” Nadeem Noor, head of United Nations Population Fund in Bihar, told The Borgen Project. “The data from the initial few days indicate that the app can be used successfully to reach end users and spread the required message.”

This app has the potential to be an indispensable tool in the struggle for gender equality and in ending all forms of discrimination against women. As part of a larger initiative, the Gender Alliance will “embark upon taking this app to front line functionaries of government departments who have a primary role in addressing the issue” Noor said.

Additionally, the Gender Alliance is working to connect the SOS function directly to the Women Police set-up in Bihar to increase their capacities on counseling the families and implementing the laws against child marriage.

Bandhan Tod was created with the needs of adolescent girls in mind. Providing young girls with basic awareness on women issues and the effects of child marriage is absolutely imperative.

In addition to offering rational, effective and quick systems that are responsive to citizens in their times of need, the initiative is working to make institutions of governance more responsive and accountable. The strides that Bandhan Tod has made thus far towards the fight to end child marriage is astounding.

– Jamie Enright

Photo: Flickr

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Incentive Program Reduces Child Marriage in Bangladesh

Child Marriage in Bangladesh
According to the International Center for Research on Women, one-third of girls in the developing world are married before the age of 18, and one in nine are married before the age of 15. In a recent study conducted by Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), researchers tested the impact of incentive programs on reducing child marriage and childbearing during teenage years. Results demonstrated the incentive program reduces child marriage in Bangladesh.

A previous study conducted by IPA in Kenya showed that encouraging girls to stay in school can reduce child marriages. However, this tactic fails to impact girls who are not attending formal schooling. Child marriage remains a societal norm in many countries, especially throughout the developing world.

Conducted in rural, southern Bangladesh, the country with the second-highest child marriage rate in the world, researchers built an incentive program into a previously formed food security program run by the nonprofit organization Save the Children. From 2007 to 2015, through a large-scale, randomized study, cooking oil was delivered to families of underaged and unmarried girls throughout multiple communities.

Within specific communities, the Adolescent Girl’s Voice empowerment program was implemented, which included meetings five to six days a week where girls from the community could socialize and receive education and life coaching. In communities without the empowerment program, girls who remained unmarried could collect cooking oil from community volunteers using a ration card.

The value of the cooking oil was chosen to offset the amount of dowry and dowry increase of unmarried girls annually. For four years after the study ended, researchers followed up with participants, documenting their marital status, childbearing history and school enrolment.

The results showed that the implemented incentive program reduces child marriage in Bangladesh, as well as decreased the rate of childbearing during teenage years.

“Girls in communities with conditional incentives were 6.3 percentage points less likely to marry before the age of 18, a 23% reduction over girls in communities without any programming,” stated the report. “They were also 2.9 percentage points less likely to have children during their teenage years, a 13% reduction over girls in communities without any programming.”

The program’s implementation in an area of extremely high rates of child marriage and childbearing during the teenage years demonstrated the success of incentive programs on lowering such rates. The program ended up being highly cost-effective, with researchers estimating that every $1,000 spent on the program led to nearly seven years of delayed marriage. There is strong evidence that incentive programs have the power to reduce child marriage in Bangladesh.

– Riley Bunch

Photo: Flickr

October 11: International Day of the Girl Child

Day of the Girl ChildOn October 11, the U.N. celebrated its annual Day of the Girl Child, which focuses on advancing the status of girls worldwide by celebrating their potential when combating the forces that endanger and repress them, such as child marriage, education inequality and health issues.

Since its inception in 2011, the Day of the Girl Child centers on a different topic each year. In 2016, the theme “Girls’ Progress = Goals Progress: A Global Girl Data Movement,” emphasizes the use of technological advances to acquire comprehensive data on girls worldwide, their unique struggles and the forces that oppress them.

In an address at the U.N. headquarters on October 11, 2016, Executive Director of U.N. Women Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka spoke on the importance of this movement: “Working with our partners, we are supporting countries to strengthen national capacity and systems to collect, analyse and disseminate gender data to improve statistics on priority issues for girls — including gender-based violence, adolescent pregnancy and reproductive health, informal employment, entrepreneurship, and unpaid work.”

Much of the U.N.’s efforts regarding the Day of the Girl Child centers on the practice of child, early and forced marriage, all of which remain prevalent issues in the world’s poorest countries.

Child marriage not only leaves psychological and physical scars that inhibit girls from personal fulfillment but also perpetuates cycles of poverty that trap families in situations with little or no education, economic disadvantages and poor health conditions.

Families often seek the temporary financial relief of a “bride price,” money given to them in exchange for marriage to their daughter. This practice, however, only continues the cyclical nature of poverty in their communities – it denies girls the opportunity for education, and ultimately, cripples new and developing families in the same way.

The other option — education for girls — helps to solve this long-term problem. A girl who has received just one additional year of primary education is 15 percent more likely to boost their future earnings, and this figure only increases with each additional year of education.

The U.N. has already made some advancements in the for fight for girls’ equality. After drawn-out and passionate lobbying in Malawi, the country passed the Marriage, Divorce and Family Relations Act in 2015, which restricts the age of marriage without parental consent to 18.

Thanks to advancements in data collection, the lives of girls and women across the globe may now be much easier to improve. U.N. Women has continued to push for the end of child marriage, and thus, a step toward ending deeply entrenched poverty in some of the world’s poorest countries. As U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Lakshmi Puri phrased it, “Humanity can’t afford to lose half of the world’s creativity, passion and work. When you invest in a girl everyone benefits.”

– Emily Marshall

Photo: Flickr

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Problem of Child Marriage in Malawi Linked to Poverty

Child Marriage in Malawi
According to Girls Not Brides, Malawi has the highest rate of child marriages worldwide, with roughly one in two girls getting married by the age of 18. In rural areas stricken with poverty, parents choose husbands for young girls to improve their financial status. Families sometimes give their daughters in marriage in an exchange called kupimbira in order to repay their debts.

Theresa Kachindamoto, chief of a Malawian district of 900,000 people, is taking a stand to eradicate child marriage in Malawi. She has prevented more than 850 marriages and enlisted 50 sub-chiefs to enforce the ban in her district. “Whether you like it or not, I want these marriages to be terminated,” Kachindamoto said. “I tell them: if you educate your girls you will have everything in the future.”

Tamara Mhango of Girls Not Brides spoke about Kachindamoto’s mission. “She goes around her community even through the different platforms to raise awareness on the importance of girl education and also directly supports and sponsors girls who are vulnerable to stay in school, thereby delaying marriages,” Mhango said.

Between 2010 and 2013, 27,612 girls in primary schools and 4,053 girls in secondary schools in Malawi dropped out because of forced marriage. In addition to this, 14,051 primary school students and 5,597 secondary school students dropped out after becoming pregnant.

According to a Human Rights Watch report titled, “‘I’ve Never Experienced Happiness’: Child Marriage in Malawi,” marriage interrupts girls’ education and dreams. Many of Malawi’s child brides reported that they weren’t able to return to school because they couldn’t afford school fees, child care services, school programs or adult classes. Household chores also contended for their time.

The report found that child marriage in Malawi often forced girls into relationships wrought with sexual and domestic abuse and gender-based violence. Some girls said their families used manipulative tactics to coerce them into forced marriage, threatening and verbally abusing them or throwing them out on the street if they refused to comply.

“The lack of dissemination and popularization of policies and laws that protect girls [in] the communities is one of the challenges faced in the efforts to eradicate the practice,” Mhango told The Borgen Project. “Inconsistencies in the new marriage law and the constitution [regarding] the legal age of marriage is one deterrent factor.”

According to health workers in Malawi, problems related to reproductive health and pregnancy, such as maternal death, obstetric fistula, premature delivery and anemia, occur most frequently among young girls. Malawi’s maternal mortality rate has reached 675 deaths per 100,000 live births. Malawian health workers suggested that early pregnancy complications could be avoided with better funding.

“If allowed to stay in school, properly supported through their education, and make sure that policies are in place, enforced and implemented to protect the girls at all levels, then we would prevent child marriages,” Mhango said.

– Rachel Williams

Photo: Flickr

Goats and Chickens Can Help End Child Marriage

Child MarriageWhat do chickens and goats have in common? Well, chickens and goats live on farms, and both can help end child marriage.

In Ethiopia and Tanzania, many families are given livestock in exchange for marrying off their young girls to adult men. However, if these girls already own animals, the trade becomes less vital for poor families and the marriages are less likely to occur.

Population Council, an organization that conducts research on health and development issues, spent three years in Ethiopia and Tanzania implementing methods to reduce child marriage rates. They discovered that educating the community, donating school supplies and providing girls with goats and chickens were the most effective ways to end early marriage.

Child marriage is most closely associated with poverty because struggling families are in desperate need of the dowry that adult husbands are willing to pay. In Tanzania and Ethiopia, nearly 40 percent of girls are married before they turn 18, and in just Ethiopia, nearly 20 percent of girls are married before age 15.

Population Council conducted research in Ethiopia that drastically reduced the possibility of illegal child marriage. They discovered that by giving girls between the ages of 15 and 17 two chickens every year, they were half as likely to be married by 18 than those who did not receive the animals. Additionally, 12 to 14-year-olds who were given school supplies were 94 percent less likely to be married as a child.

In Tanzania, the legal marriage age is 15, but by providing 15- to 17-year-old girls with goats, the odds of child marriage could be reduced by more than 60 percent.

Early marriage prevents girls from attending school and receiving an education. It heightens the risk of HIV/AIDS and limits a girl’s potential to get a job and earn a wage. Child marriage ultimately dehumanizes young girls by taking away their right to choose what they do with their lives.

Still, more than 14 million girls around the world are married each year before they turn 18. Educating developing communities on the harmfulness of child marriage and providing school supplies so girls can attend school are basic yet successful ways to reduce the rates at which young girls marry.

Goats and chickens, too, are playing a highly successful role in ending child marriage and breaking the cycle of global poverty. Hats off to Old MacDonald. E-I-E-I-O.

– Sarah Sheppard

Sources: Take Part, Girls Not Brides 1, Girls Not Brides 2, Population Council
Photo: Girls Not Brides

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Malawi: Education Over Marriage

Malawi: Education Over Marriage
A minute is all it takes for 28 young girls around the world to be married off as child brides, adding up to 15 million underage brides per year. One of the main reasons for young marriage is to relieve the bride’s family of having to support her, which some struggle to do. As a result, the cycle of poverty continues with those girls having to abandon school and years later, their own underage daughters get married.

A child’s place is at school learning, making friends and playing. They are usually emotionally and physically unprepared for marriage, making them susceptible to domestic abuse and life-threatening pregnancies and births.

Until Feb. 2015, Malawi had one of the highest rates of child marriage, with 50 percent of girls being married before the age of 18. This changed in Feb. 2015, when President Peter Mutharika signed a law raising the marriage age from 15 to 18. To show the commitment to enforcing the law, 300 child marriages were annulled and kids were sent back to school earlier this month. Despite the progress, there is a loophole where parents can provide consent for 16-year-old girls to marry.

The fight to pass this law has been a process with Malawi’s Stop Child Marriage campaign beginning in 2011 by Girls Empowerment Network (Genet) and Let Girls Lead. They trained 200 girls in the Chiradzulo District of southern Malawi to become advocates. The advocates lobbied 60 village chiefs to change laws and establish by-laws to protect teen girls from marriage and sexual initiation practices.

The bylaws force men who marry girls under 21 to give up land and pay a fee of seven goats, a major economic penalty in the region. The bylaws also imposed social sanctions such as three months of janitorial service in a local health clinic for parents who marry their underage daughters.

Genet had hoped the election of the first woman president, Joyce Banda, would raise the marriage age, but she didn’t. Then in 2014, when Peter Mutharika was elected, Genet advocated extensively with his minister of gender, Patricia Kaliati. Fortunately, President Mutharika believes in the empowerment of financially independent women and signed the law.

Although it is difficult to break cultural beliefs and traditions, especially in rural areas, progress is being made at the government level. The local education campaigns will play a key role in educating and spreading the word about the new law, especially in places where people may be less educated regarding the law.

One strong advocate, Memory Banda, 18, was able to finish school, but her younger sister wasn’t as lucky. Memory’s younger sister was married at 11 to a man in his early 30s. This led her to speak up and help in leading the campaign to pass the law. Memory’s sister is now 16 with three children. In March, Memory spoke at the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women for herself, her sister and the 70 million girls married as kids.

– Paula Acevedo

Sources: Global Citizen, The Guardian
Photo: Flickr

Memory Banda: Champion for Girls in Malawi

girls_in_malawi
Girls not Brides reports that “over 700 million women alive today were married as children” and that “1 in 3 girls in the developing world are said to be married before 18.” Malawi is the worst offender for child marriage as one in two girls in Malawi are married before 18, many of them married even well before the age of 15.

Such young marriages are a cultural custom, but it is at the expense of the girls involved. When girls become pubescent, they are sent to cleansing ceremonies where girls as young as nine are taught how to sexually please a man, even being forced to engage in sex with an older man to become cleansed from their “childhood dust.” Many girls often leave the ceremonies infected with HIV/AIDs, or even pregnant.

Since pregnancy and marriage are forced on girls at such a young age, most girls drop out of school and remain uneducated. If a girl becomes pregnant at the ceremony, it is normal for that girl to be forced into a marriage immediately. Divorce is also quite high; it is not uncommon for a 16 year-old to have several children and a divorce or two as well.

Such is the story of Memory Banda’s sister and many other girls in her country of Malawi, but not for Memory herself. She was determined not go to a cleansing ceremony, but, rather, to finish her education. She not only finished her education, but also went on to become a champion for girls’ rights in Malawi.

She was part of a writing workshop for girls, where the girls shared their experiences of the cultural practices they faced. The Girls Empowerment Network Malawi (GENET) compiled and published these accounts as “I Will Marry When I Want To!” Memory recently gave a TedTalk in May 2015, describing the culture she grew up in and the challenges that young girls face in Malawi, as described above.

Memory has also specifically lobbied her government for new laws regarding child marriage and has spoken at a UN event. Her platform, in conjunction with GENET, focuses on bringing awareness to the dire women’s rights’ issue in Malawi and has helped legislation change in Malawi.

In early 2015, an official law was made that raised the legal marrying age to 18. In a country where child marriage is a cultural norm and abuse against women often goes unreported in an effort for families to save their reputations, this ruling is a monumental achievement. Girls, and their education and well-being, are being given the recognition and respect that they deserve in the legal system.

There is a stipulation in the new law that children aged 15-18 may still marry with parental consent, and there is worry that illegal marriages will still take place. Also, now the police force must enforce the law, a fact that could meet resistance in areas. But legislation is starting to move the issue in the right direction; girls are being given a fighting chance to have a life of their own.

Memory Banda and the girls brave enough to stand with her are taking back their rights to choose marriage when they are ready. Those girls who have suffered through a child marriage, like Memory’s sister, are ready to give their own children a different fate. Ripples of change are moving through Malawi culture thanks to Memory Banda and those who stand for women’s rights.

– Megan Ivy

Sources: GENET, Girls not Brides, Genet Malawi, KBIA, TedTalk
Photo: Girls Learn International

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With Successes Come Education Struggles

education_struggles
There have been many successes for girl’s education in the developing world. Challenges remain, however, creating a puzzle for problem solvers around the world.

Girls face many more education struggles than boys do. This is especially the case during puberty. For one girl living in Uganda who wants to be a doctor, lack of proper toilets causes embarrassment and results in missed days at school. “Some toilets don’t have doors and so we fear to enter as people can see or enter the toilets at any time. At the toilets, they don’t have water to flush or wash, and so it’s complicated to attend school when I have my period.”

While some might think this is a minor issue in the grand scheme of things, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization or UNESCO has found differently. One in 10 girls across Africa miss school during their period. Half of girls attending school in Ethiopia miss between one and four days of school a month because of menstruation.

In India, the problem is even worse. Sixty-six percent of schools there do not have functioning toilets. Without private toilets, girls’ health is put at risk. Coupled with the stigma and taboos associated with menstruation and periods, and the result is often that girls drop out of school in the developing world.

Another issue that also affects girls’ education in Africa is child marriage. Every year, 15 million girls 18 or under marry. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 40 percent are married before 18, and 12 percent before they are even 15. In Chad, the number of girls married under age 15 jumps to 29 percent. Even with minimum age laws, marriages still go ahead with parental consent.

This has implications for young women’s education. Once they are married, they are expected to fulfill duties at home which leaves them with them no time to pursue their studies. This begins a vicious circle: without education girls are not informed of their rights and are able to act on them.

Despite these challenges, there have been huge gains in education for girls around the developing world. By 2012, most countries had reached the Millennium Development Goal target of girls primary education parity with boys. For many countries this meant that for every 100 boys, 97 girls also attended primary school.

However, even in this victory lies a caveat – not all countries have actually reached full parity. Sub-Saharan Africa enrollment rate for primary school-aged girls was still languishing at 75 percent in 2010. “Three-quarters of the countries that have not achieved parity at the primary level enroll more boys than girls at the start of the school cycle.” To equalize enrollment at the beginnings of school years would be to achieve parity.

Afghanistan stands out as a beacon of success when it comes to girls’ education, especially with the Taliban influence in the area that discourages girls in school. Girls enrollment in 2014 reached 3.75 million girls. In 2002, only 191,000 were enrolled.

While there are still big problems girls face around the developing world when it comes to attending school, it is important to acknowledge the victories. More work is needed but if progress continues, more successes will come.

– Gregory Baker

Sources: The Guardian 1, The Guardian 2, The Guardian 3, The Guardian 4, The Guardian 5, UN Women
Photo: The Better India

Child Marriage in India

Child_Marriage_in_India
Each year, approximately 15 million girls under the age of 18 are forced into marriage. These child brides normally have their husbands selected for them by their fathers, and they are not given any power or choice when it comes to their marriage. Many of them are forced to marry men much older than they are.

Child marriage is most prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. India accounts for one-third of the total child brides worldwide, even though the legal marrying age in India is 21 for men and 18 for women, as established by the 2006 Prohibition of Child Marriage Act.

The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act did not cause a significant decrease in the amount of child marriages that take place in India, where 47% of girls marry before the age of 18. Child marriage in India is more common in rural areas, where 56% of girls marry before the age of 18, than they are in urban areas, where 29% of girls marry before 18.

Societal traditions and norms allow child marriage to persist despite its illegality. Many brides are forced to marry early because the later they are married, the larger their dowry will have to be. It is still common in India to give a dowry or a present from the bride’s family to the groom’s at the time of marriage, although the practice was banned in 1961.

As The Guardian states, another reason why some parents marry their daughter at a young age is because they fear that their daughter might have sexual relations when she is a teenager, therefore shaming her family and lowering her chances of getting married later on. Child marriage is also widespread because poor families realize that marrying their daughter means that they have one less child to feed, since brides tend to go live with their husband’s family.

Since child marriage is illegal, weddings normally take place in the evening or at night. Police officers are bribed to not report the marriage.

The consequences of child marriage are devastating. Girls who marry young are not able to complete their education and are therefore forced to rely on their husband and his family. Even on the rare occasion that they have the chance to end the marriage, they are often not able to because they have nowhere to go and no way to support themselves. Girls under the age of 15 are also five times more likely to die in childbirth than those over the age of 20. Young brides are also more likely to contract HIV because they are forced to marry older men.

The International Center for Research on Women reports that girls in India who marry under the age of 18 are twice as likely to experience domestic violence. Child brides also experience sexual abuse, and many suffer from PTSD and severe depression.

Some girls are forced to enter a marriage agreement at an extremely young age and then go to live with their husbands when they reach puberty. This was supposed to be the case for Santa Devi Maghwal, an Indian girl from Rajasthan who was married at 11 months old and told that she would have to live with her husband when she turned 16. Maghwal is currently working with child right’s campaigner Kriti Bharti to annul the marriage. Luckily, Maghwal is not the only one who has turned to the law in order to end her marriage. Bharti made history in 2012 when she obtained India’s first annulment of a child marriage for sixteen year old Laxmi Sagara. Since then, Bharti has won 27 more annulments. While divorce is hard to come by in India, since courts are overburdened and take a long time to rule, annulments can be achieved as long as there is some proof — such as a birth or school certificate — that the bride was married before the age of 18.

Bharti has made progress, but India still has a way to go before it can truly end child marriage. For child marriages to end, societal norms and patriarchal customs need to end as well.

– Ashrita Rau

Sources: ICRW, CBN, National Geographic 1, National Geographic 2, UNICEF, Girls not Brides, The Guardian
Photo: Huffington Post

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Maternal Mortality in Nigeria

maternal_mortality_nigeria
Nigeria is second only to India in terms of the number of maternal deaths it experiences, and along with five other countries—India, Pakistan, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, China and Ethiopia—Nigeria is part of a group which makes up more than 50 percent of the maternal mortalities that occur in the world.

The Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) in Nigeria was 560 per 100,000 live births in 2013. As UNICEF states, Nigeria loses 145 women to maternal mortality each day. This high level of maternal mortality is also linked to Nigeria’s high rate of deaths for children under 5—newborns account for a quarter of the under-five deaths which occur in the country.

There are many reasons why maternal mortality in Nigeria is so high, including a lack of access to healthcare, rampant poverty, substandard health care and the prevalence of child marriage.

Urban women have more of an opportunity to receive healthcare than rural women do. As stated in a Global One report about Nigeria, women in urban areas have over twice as many deliveries taking place in public and private health facilitates than women in rural areas. This is because women in rural areas are normally not able to afford the transport to the hospitals in urban areas, and have to settle for midwives or traditional birth attendants—or no help at all—when giving birth. Many of these traditional birth attendants do not have the skills and training necessary for delivering a baby—for example, many are not able to perform C-sections—and for treating complications that can occur during birth.

Rural women do not have the money to travel to hospitals to receive better care. Nigeria has a high poverty rate, with a 2010 report stating that 64.4 percent of the population lived in extreme poverty and 83.9 percent of the population lived in moderate to extreme poverty. The fact that many people cannot afford the healthcare that they need contributes to Nigeria’s high MMR.

Even if women in Nigeria are able to have access to a hospital, they sometimes still end up suffering. This is because some hospitals in Nigeria have substandard care. For example, Global One’s report states that substandard birth techniques in government hospitals in North-Central Nigeria, including poor C-section procedures, accounted for 40 percent of all fistula injuries suffered by women in Nigeria.

A fistula, according to the World Health Organization, is a hole in the birth canal. Fistulas are directly connected to obstructed labor, a problem that contributes to high levels of maternal mortality. Even if women survive labor, many of them still have to live with the fistula. Approximately two million women live with an untreated obstetric fistula in Sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia, and women with fistulas suffer incontinence, social segregation and health issues.

Fistulas are more common in women who give birth at a young age. These women’s bodies are not ready for childbirth, leading to many health problems, including obstetric fistulas. Nigeria has an extremely high rate of child marriage—43 percent of girls get married before the age of eighteen—and many of those girls are not given the option of whether or not they want to get pregnant. Contraceptive use is slowly becoming more widespread and acceptable, but in 2008, only 10 percent of women used contraceptives.

Since contraceptive use is still stigmatized, many brides under the age of 18 are forced to give birth, and their bodies are very vulnerable to complications, therefore contributing to a high maternal mortality rate. Nigeria also has a high fertility rate—five children per woman in 2014—which also impacts the MMR.

If Nigeria wants to reduce its high levels of maternal mortality, it has to make sure that access to healthcare is more widespread. It also needs to improve the quality of healthcare available, reduce the number of child marriages and de-stigmatize contraceptive use.

– Ashrita Rau

Sources: UNICEF, WHO 1 WHO 2, WHO 3, WHO 3, Global One Girls not Brides, IRIN News CIA World Factbook
Photo: Healthy Newborn Network