Girls Not Brides: Addressing Child Marriage in
Chad
Executive Summary
Child marriage in Chad is one of the most widespread forms of gender based
violence which threatens the survival and development of children and curtails
their freedom to choose and make free and informed consent regarding their
future married life.
The practice is also supported by inadequate and
discriminatory legislation towards the girl child in relation to the legal minimum
age for marriage and criminalization of the practice to punish perpetrators and
provide reparations to the victims.
Current strategies to address child marriage include community sensitisation to
inform community members about the devastating consequences of child marriage,
capacity building for key service actors through training on legal instruments that
govern the protection of women and children and supporting law review to
harmonize legislation with international standards related to the protection of
children and women.
Interventions also include working with core groups of young people and women’s
groups to reach out to more community members with necessary information to
change their beliefs and attitudes towards child marriage. Addressing underlying
factors behind child marriage through supporting vulnerable households with
income generation activities also proves to be fundamental for addressing child
marriage.
However in order to design more effective interventions, social norms around this
practice need to be understood and addressed. Child marriage is perpetuated by
beliefs among community members that children need to marry early for fear of
losing their virginity if they overgrow in their families. People especially men
believe that young spouses are more faithful to their husbands and are able to
bear many children.
There are also normative personal expectations among people that one should
marry chaste, pure and virgin girls. They believe that girls should marry right after
puberty and excision because they can already fulfil women’s role in the home.
There are dominant empirical expectations among community members who
expect parents to marry their children early. Parents also believe that community
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members expect them to marry off their children at a young age as a form of
protection against sexual exposure, unwanted pregnancies and children out of the
wedlock which is considered as a disgrace for the whole family. There are also
social expectations that marrying children early is a form of insurance for better
future life especially by accessing economic opportunities.
In order to change the social expectations around child marriage, several
strategies were proposed that target the change of behaviour among parents and
the wider community members through community initiated discussions and the
development of a community collective pledge to end child marriage. The ‘Late
Marriage Convention’ pledge should be supported by a wide range of interventions
in order to bear tangible results.
Such interventions would include mass communication strategies that target
people’s perceptions around early marriages. Information, education and
communication materials that target people’s beliefs and attitudes and highlight
the devastating impact of child marriage on their health and education would bring
people to change their behaviour. Community discussions and deliberations around
values of positive parenting, family honour and protection (re-categorization and
developing new scripts) are needed to change people’s normative expectations and
adopt the new norm of late marriage.
There is also need to support communities to identify and support new core
reference groups that can diffuse the late marriage convention principles through
community dialogues, theater and other appropriate communication channels.
Addressing other underlying factors like poverty, lack of education opportunities,
gender inequality and building protective environment through supportive
legislation, economic opportunities and overall promotion of child rights is equally
important to sustain the positive social norm.
INTRODUCTION
Gender based violence is widespread in Chad and is linked with social beliefs and
cultural practices transmitted generation after generation in a male-dominated
society and where women have a low social standing. Women who represent 52% of
the total population are faced with a wide range of violence including domestic
violence, physical, emotional, and sexual violence, rape, early/forced marriages
and female genital cutting. Children below 18 years who represent 57% of the total
population (over 11 million) face almost similar forms of violence with
early/forced marriages taking the highest proportion.
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1 in every 5 women is believed to face physical violence and 12% of women face
sexual violence. 44% of women report that they are victims of female genital
cutting which is mostly linked with ethnic identity1.
Child marriage
Child marriage is a widespread phenomenon and has devastating impact on the
survival and development of children and denies them the right to choose and
make a free consent for their future partners. ⅔ of minors are forced to marry
before the age of 182 while a survey indicates that Chad is ranked third in SubSahara Africa after Niger and Mali with 35% of minors being married before 15.
According to 2004 demographic and health survey, 50% of women aged 25-49 have
entered a union at 15.9 years. 71% of women are married before the age of 18
(65% in urban areas and 74% in rural areas). 42% of young women have already had
a child or are pregnant for the first time when they turn 17.
Consequences of early marriages
There are devastating consequences for victims of early/forced marriages. Girls
who marry early face complications during pregnancies and often have untimely
births because their bodies are not mature enough to undergo such
transformations. They mostly develop fistula and live with the shame and
humiliation that community members impose on them. Girls drop out of school to
go and marry to satisfy parents’ obligations and probably to avoid the
stigmatization that goes with late marriage. Experience shows that households
with young spouses are sometimes unstable because the girl is not well prepared
for family duties. Upbringing of children also becomes a daunting task for
immature wives. Women who marry early often have very poor physical and
psychological health and have short life expectancy.
Legal discrepancies
Child marriage is reinforced by a legal vacuum in terms of adequate legislation
that protects children against this harmful practice. There is already
discrimination in the 1999 draft bill of the People and Family Code that fixes the
minimum age for marriage at 18 for boys and 17 for girls. The 1958 French civil
code fixes the minimum age for marriage at 15 years for girls and 18 for boys.
The Chadian Penal Code article 277 implicitly fixes the age for marriage at 13 since
the code only penalizes customary marriage concluded before 13. In case of
marriage by abduction, article 289 paragraph 2 provides that when a girl is
abducted and forced to marry the abductor, the abuser can only be sued in justice
by those who qualify to cause nullification of the marriage and sentencing can only
1
2
Demographic and Health Survey, 2004
MICS, UNICEF 2010
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intervene only after such nullification. The reality is that in many cases those who
qualify to cause nullification of the marriage are co-actors or accomplices in the
abduction or marriage through abduction.
Reviewing the law and adopting more protective legislation is hence very
fundamental to support the change of this negative norm. It is equally important
to ensure that there is an enabling social environment that promotes respect for
the right of children to marry when they are of age for the law to be effective.
SOCIAL NORMS AND CHILD MARRIAGE
Social norms are embedded in widely held beliefs, expectations, preferences and
attitudes. A pattern of behaviour satisfies the condition of social norm when
individuals prefer to conform to it on condition that they believe that (a) most
people in their relevant network conform to it (empirical expectations), and (b)
that most people in their relevant network believe they ought to conform to it
(normative expectations)3.
Our premise is that child marriage constitutes a social norm because majority of
parents marry their children early because other parents in their communities do it
(empirical expectation) and they believe that other community members expect
them to marry their children early as a means of protection and insurance for
happy future life (normative expectations). There are conditional preferences for
parents to marry off their children early because of social expectations from other
community members to conform to this practice. The following lines explore these
issues in details.
Factual beliefs: There are lots of beliefs supporting the practice of early/forced
marriages. Majority of people think that a girl is likely to lose her virginity when
she overgrows in her family, which constitutes dishonour for the family. In a
society where gender roles confer low social standing to women and where
members of the households constitute cheap manpower for the husband (work in
the field, looking after cattle and fetching water and firewood, etc.), people
believe that marrying early and many wives is a guarantee for multiple births since
the woman starts giving birth at an early age.
Again in a male-dominated society, the factual beliefs of men are especially
important because they can perhaps form part of the foundation of the practice.
In this context, men believe that a woman will be faithful and obedient if she
marries at an early age because she will see the husband as a protector to whom
she becomes so strongly attached. Parent-arranged early/forced marriages are also
seen as a means to build strong family ties among parents sometimes based on
material wealth.
3
The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms, Cristina Bicchieri, Cambridge University
Press 2006
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Personal normative beliefs: Majority of men believe that one should marry a
young girl because she is still chaste, pure and virgin. Parents also believe it is
right to marry off their children by the time they reach puberty and right after
excision initiation ceremony for those who perform this practice because they
believe she is already a woman. This links to the belief earlier mentioned that girls
should marry early to bear many children but also to the belief that women’s role
is limited to that of home care and child bearing.
Empirical expectations: Parents who married when they were children might think
it is acceptable to marry off their children at a young age. Because they grew up in
communities where children marry early they believe it is right to marry as soon as
they believe girls can bear children. Past practice influences present behavior of
these parents.
Majority of parents may also wish to marry off their daughters early especially in
poor families because they know other parents are doing it because the male
partner will take over the care burden. Mothers may also push their sons to marry
early because they know other mothers-in-law are getting cheap manpower from
their daughters-in-law.
Having someone available to perform house chores and take orders for other family
duties becomes a motivational factor for many women to favor early marriages.
Not to follow the trend will cause the not-feel-good and odd-man-out feelings
which no parent wishes to endure.
Normative expectations: Parents believe that other community members expect
them to marry their daughters early as a form of protection against sexual
exposure, unwanted pregnancies and children out of wedlock which is a disgrace in
the family. Not only parents believe they are expected to do so as responsible
parents towards their children but also as a shield against community rebuke
should their daughters misbehave and bear children before marriage.
Men play a role in this play out of social expectations about early marriage. Boys
believe they are expected to marry early by members of their bachelor circles
because marrying late may mean not to marry at all. Girls who have overgrown in
their families may be seen as less considerate and ill-behaved. No one boy would
like to be the talk of the town that something is going wrong either with his
manhood or his capacity to acquire the bride price.
Another element that supports the normative expectations is the fact that parents
believe that other community members expect them as responsible parents to
marry their daughters early lest they do not get married at all. There is
interdependence between the fact that parents prefer to marry off their children
early while they are still chaste and pure and the fear that keeping their
daughters at home predispose them to rape which again brings disgrace and fingerHenri Nzeyimana
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pointing to the whole family. Both the conception of marriageability, family honor
and protection of daughters influence social expectations around early marriages.
Child marriage and other causal factors
Following Cristina’s diagnostic tool to determine a social norm, norms do not
stand alone and might be embedded in other web of beliefs, values and practices.
It is therefore important to explore further the link between the common practice
of child marriage and the expected social role of the woman especially in rural
areas.
Investigations into this matter may reveal or confirm why majority of girls do not
attend school or drop out of school when they are believed to be ready for
marriage (the school enrolment for girls at primary level stands at 50% and only 5%
at secondary level ;data from 2000-2007 and child marriage ranks first among
causes of school dropout). As reported earlier 50% of women aged 25-49 have
entered a union at 15.9 years which means that these women have dropped out of
school before they complete secondary education or have never attended school.
It is quite common to see young girls looking after cattle while others participate
in the family livelihood activities like selling firewood and water at the market or
tendering gardens. There is an interrelation between the fact that girls do not go
to school because they constitute cheap manpower and the fact that this lack of
education will keep them in the dependence condition. Again the fact that girls
are expected to marry early influences their dropping out of school which keeps
them in their expected social role of family care, child rearing and providers of
men’s sexual gratification.
CURRENT STRATEGIES TO ADDRESS CHILD MARRIAGE
A critical evaluation of the current strategies points to the fact that the emphasis
has been put on interventions that are likely to change the factual beliefs and
personal normative expectations. This therefore calls for the need to tailor the
modified strategies so that the change in personal beliefs and attitudes lead to
change of behavior. For this to happen, the strategies should focus on collective
community action to change the child marriage practice.
Community mobilization
Addressing child marriage requires a well-tailored and sustained communication
strategy that aim at changing people’s beliefs and personal attitudes that motivate
parents to marry off their children early. The current strategy focuses on
community sensitization and information campaigns through radio programs and
production and dissemination of information, education and communication (IEC)
materials.
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Key messages conveyed during the group communication turn around the negative
consequences of early marriages like high rate of maternal and child mortality
among young mothers, psychological trauma linked with separation from parents,
despair and hopelessness which sometimes lead to suicide or running away from
the partner to name but a few. The messages are aimed at providing factual
information necessary to bring community members to see the other side of the
coin and change perceptions around child marriage.
Diffusion of information through core groups
Community sensitization is carried out by core group of youth club and women’s
association members. The core group members are first trained on types and
manifestations of GBV, consequences and causes behind different forms of GBV.
They are also informed of the referral system in place and available services in
their communities. On their turn they organize information and sensitization
sessions in their communities such as internally displaced sites, return villages and
host communities to reach more members. Messages conveyed by youth and
women’s groups also aim to change community members’ beliefs and personal
attitudes towards child marriage.
The youth reference groups also play the role of monitoring cases of early/forced
marriages and reporting them to GBV focal persons and traditional leaders who
thus either convince concerned parents to stop the giving away their of their
daughters. They also sometimes refer the cases to implementing partner who in
turn refers cases to police for investigations and to other services providers in case
of rape to access PEP kits and other medical assistance.
The core groups of youth members also play a critical role as peer educators
among young people on issues like gender equality, the importance of education
and dangers of marrying early. Being young boys and young girls who abstain from
marrying before age they might also serve as good role models and catalysts of
change in personal normative beliefs among the youth regarding child marriage. In
the long run, the adoption of late marriage practice by majority of young people
could result in a change of empirical expectations among their parents as the
number of early marriage adopters reduce.
Reinforcing legal norms
Community sensitizations are coupled with training and awareness-raising on the
national and international legal instruments that provide for the protection of
women and children. This is fundamental because it helps law enforcement and
justice personnel to adopt positive attitudes towards punishing perpetrators and
causing reparations for the victims. This also sends a warning message towards
parents and those who support the practice that there are sanctions provided by
the law.
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Advocacy is being undertaken to review existing laws and develop new supportive
legislation (review and adoption of the People and Family Code 1999, introduction
of the Child Protection Code). Provisions of the Penal Code that are not consistent
with other legal obligations in favor of the protection of women and children need
to be analyzed for possible amendments.
The mutually reinforcing nature of the law and the social norm is also valid in this
sense since initiatives to redress the early marriage practice is hampered by
parallel justice whereby traditional leaders resolve cases of early marriages by
arranging for perpetrators to marry the abused girls in the name of maintaining
social harmony and community cohesion. In the absence of law enforcement
mechanisms, the law becomes ineffective.
There is need to ensure traditional leaders comply with the applicable law and
promote positive social practice. Otherwise the double victimization of abused
children serves the perpetuation of the child marriage practice. Involving
traditional leaders in sensitization campaigns and training aims to correct this
imbalance and align them with the applicable law and the social function they are
expected to fulfill.
Working with institutions
Changing norms requires also engaging and collaborating with government
institutions to achieve sustainability and build institutional framework within
which programmatic responses can be developed. To this end the UN Country
Team engaged the high level collaboration with the Ministry of Social Welfare, and
the First Lady to spearhead a national campaign ‘Together to end violence against
women’ in 2009. The campaign culminated in a Presidential Declaration to end
violence against women by end of 2009. A national strategy to end violence against
women and a programme of action were adopted following the national campaign.
Providing opportunities for children’s protective environment
GBV issues are interdependent and are mostly linked with the dependence status
of the woman in the society. Women who are uneducated and without revenue are
likely to have their daughters married off early either because they do not see the
importance of education or simply because they want the bride price as an income
for the family.
To address these underlying causes of structural gender inequality and the
likelihood to impact on the protection of children against early marriages, UNICEF
supports self-empowerment activities for the most vulnerable households in IDP
sites, return villages and host communities through income generating activities.
IGAs are aimed at empowering them to break the dependence circle and minimize
chances for their children to marry early.
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PROPOSED INTERVENTIONS TO CHANGE THE SOCIAL NORM
From pluralistic ignorance to common knowledge
Because the child marriage practice has been going on over many generations and
is supported by deep-seated social expectations on what a caring and responsible
parent is (categorization and script), dissenting voices cannot be publicly
supported and encouraged. There is then pluralistic ignorance among people that
there are those who disapprove of the practice. Therefore, even those who might
oppose child marriage still conform to the practice because they do not know that
there are others who share the same disapproval.
This is compounded by the fact that women and children are not expected to voice
out their concerns in public or even participate in public discussions with adult
males.
Organizing public mass campaigns where people are given opportunities to share
their views on this practice and organizing community open discussions and
deliberations on issues around early marriages could bring about common
knowledge that many share the same disapproval of the harmful practice. The
common knowledge can then enhance the confidence in and encourage those who
want to stop this practice.
Proceeding from the same motivation that parents marry off their daughters early
for the sake of protection and insurance for happy future life, information and
discussion on the devastating consequences will play the role of providing critical
information to parents and hence enable them to change their behaviors. There
can then be demand to change the practice. There is need to engage communities
in the process of discussion so that they might come up with fundamental decisions
and make commitments to overturn this practice.
The current response strategies have had some positive effects especially in terms
of raising awareness among communities and building capacities for key service
actors on GBV issues. The strategies present however some limitations in that some
of them like the national campaign and Presidential Declaration are top-down
initiatives which are not sustained by community engagement through communityinitiated interventions.
The declaration from government officials are sometimes motivated by political
motives and serve public relations with the donor community and the desire to
appear in line with other international commitments. Without collective action to
monitor and denounce deviations against agreed actions, the declaration remains
an empty shell without effect on the prevailing community beliefs and
expectations towards child marriage.
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The community mobilization campaigns also lack impetus because they have not
been followed by collective commitment by community members to change and
adhere to a new norm of protecting children against early/forced marriages. There
is no binding community pledge and no mechanism in place to monitor and
denounce deviators or agreed upon rewards and sanctions to regulate their
collective commitment.
Late Marriage Convention (LMC)
Changing the social norm of child marriage can only be successful if embedded in
community collective action to overturn this practice. This can be achieved
through a refocused strategy of community mobilization and engagement. For the
current mobilization strategy to take root and bear tangible results there is need
to introduce a kind of ‘Late Marriage Convention’ around which to mobilize
parents, traditional leaders and other influential people to support this change.
The refocused strategy can build on reference group of parents especially women
who have married as children and those whose children have been married before
the required age (creating new networks strategy). The network should also
include men who might be favorable to the new norm. Youth club and women’s
associations’ members who are already involved in the community mobilization
against GBV would also play a critical role in this LMC network. This reference
group can sensitize other community members on negative consequences of
marrying early and advantages of marrying when one is ready for this life
commitment. Open discussions on issues around marriage, positive parenting and
caring practices (re-categorization and developing new scripts around values of
child survival and development like supporting health care, sending children to
school) can bring people to change their normative expectations that perpetuate
child marriage.
The value addition of the ‘Late Marriage Convention’ is to change empirical
expectations among early adopters of the norm (the core group that accepts to
marry children later). Normative expectations among the late adopters would
change as well because what they believe other people should do will be gradually
changing in their communities.
Internal incentives (pride, guilt, sense of belonging) to promote LMC
The ‘Late Marriage Convention’ disciples can devise socially binding strategies to
reward those who adhere to the convention such as public recognition during social
events, community support groups to assist parents whose children may be
tempted to marry early or leave school to marry because of lack of opportunities.
Women who have married late and have succeeded in life could act as role models
(high degree node) and share their experiences during community dialogues around
child marriage.
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Those who violate the convention could also face community sanctions such as
exclusion from important social events. Members of the ‘Late Marriage Convention’
could shun away ceremonies where families marry off underage children so that
parents are forced to drink from the bitter cup alone.
LMC visibility and communication strategies
In order to dispel fears from individual parents who would still believe that
community members expect them to marry their children early, the strategy
should emphasize community dialogue whereby members are informed about the
new norm and where those who have adhered to the LMC give public testimonies.
The visibility strategy that provokes emotional engagement should be reinforced
through the use of posters that denounce early marriages and encourage girl
education for example; theater and documentaries could be used to teach parents
about the advantages of protecting children from early marriages. Community
consultations on new perceptions of positive parenting and family honor could be
developed and findings disseminated during community meetings.
A ‘Fit for Marriage’ aide memoire detailing physical, emotional, psychological and
physiological requirements for a marriageable person could be developed and
disseminated among law enforcement and justice personnel, health and education
institutions, civil registration centers and youth clubs.
Addressing other underlying causes and creating alternatives
Since norms are embedded in mutually reinforcing values, beliefs and practices but
also built around mutual expectations among the reference network members,
there is need to devise other strategies that address the underlying causes behind
child marriages. Such strategies would for example tackle the community attitudes
towards girl education, discussions around the importance of bride wealth, family
planning and the advantages that go with spaced and limited births.
Influential groups could also include boys who could learn about gender equality at
early age. Life skills training around adolescent sexual and reproductive health,
HIV/AIDS awareness creation could play a role in bringing about responsible sexual
behaviors and minimizing health problems linked with early child bearing.
The current strategies also do not suffice by themselves in the absence of
synergetic actions with other areas of influence to form a critical mass of change
agents. Such areas of influence can be schools where boys and girls should be
taught life skills on gender equality, adolescent sexual and reproductive health in
order for them to become role models that can champion late marriages and instill
change in their communities.
Schools could for example initiate incentives for girls who stay in school and keep
their virginity and authorities should make schools violence-free spaces so that
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girls are encouraged to attend and stay in schools. Youth empowerment projects
should be introduced to enable them generate income. Employment opportunities
for graduates should be developed to encourage girls to attend and stay in school
until late as a means to change the social expectations that early marriage is a
form of insurance for a happy future life.
Much as sustaining the new norm requires offering opportunities to families and
youth to generate income and offer alternatives to early marriages as insurance for
future better life, such synergies should also include working with civil registration
centers, health and school institutions and community members to promote birth
registration as a long term strategy to curb child marriage practice.
Extending the social network of reference group
The strategy also needs to reinforce and reorganize youth clubs in and out of
school to debate issues of gender based violence so that the members can
constitute community change agents and late marriage promoters. The strategy
also needs to emphasize the role of religious leaders so that they can convey
messages in mosques and cathedrals that early marriage is not a religious
obligation. Preachers could reinforce messages on protecting children against
untimely marriages and serve as good examples by marrying persons of age and
marrying off their children when they reach the required age.
Even where polygamy is a custom like among Muslim communities, multiple
partner males could still practice this custom and yet adhere to the late marriage
convention. In this way religion could still attract followers and promote positive
social practices.
CONCLUSION
Stopping child marriage not only protects children against the harmful effects on
their health, education and freedom to participate in community affairs but also
serves as a critical ingredient to meet the Millennium Development Goals as they
apply to child survival and development (MDG 1 –eradicating poverty and hunger,
MDG 2 -achieving universal primary education, MDG 3 -promoting gender equality,
MDG 4 –protecting children’s lives and MDG 5&6 –improving health).
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