Child Marriage Prevention and Protection Act of 2006
CHILD MARRIAGE PREVENTION AND PROTECTION ACT OF 2006 -- (Senate - July 12, 2006)
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise today to announce that tomorrow I will introduce the Child Marriage Protection Act of 2006 which is cosponsored by Senator CHUCK HAGEL of Nebraska. I have believed for a long period of time that one of the best predictors of how a nation will develop economically can be found in the answer to one question: How does that nation treat its women? If women are treated as property or slaves without rights or opportunities, the country's prospect for economic advancement will be low. But if women have the opportunity to advance and prosper, so will their nation.
The untapped economic and educational potential of girls and women in many developing nations represents an enormous loss to those societies. If women play such a key role in economic development, then we have to start with an even more basic question: How does a country treat its daughters? Girls' educational opportunities and access to health care are key variables in this equation.
The issue of child marriage is another important, but often unrecognized, element that significantly affects access to education and dramatically shapes the lives of girls and women in many developing countries. That is why Senator Hagel and I will be introducing this bill.
Child marriage is dangerous to the health of girls and young women and their children, detrimental to economic progress, illegal in most countries, and yet common in many parts of the world. In some countries, girls as young as 7 or 8 years old are often married.
This last week's New York Times Sunday magazine had a pictorial display of some of these child marriages around the world. It was heartbreaking to see girls who would be in the second and third grade in the United States of America being claimed as wives by these older men.
Early marriage also carries with it serious health risks. In developing countries, girls aged 10 to 14 who become pregnant are five times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than women who are 20 years to 24 years of age. Their children suffer from high mortality rates as well.
In countries with high rates of HIV/AIDS, child marriage is itself a risk factor: Girls who are married are at a greater risk of HIV/AIDS than unmarried girls. This is one of the many sad ironies of this practice. Parents may believe that earlier marriage will protect their daughters; instead, it places them in greater danger.
Adolescent mothers in developing countries are also at high risk for a condition known as obstetric fistula. This is a medical condition which has virtually disappeared in developed countries around the world. It occurs most often when a woman is trapped in prolonged, obstructed labor without medical care. In nearly every case, the baby in such circumstances is stillborn. Women and girls who survive the ordeal of prolonged labor may be virtually ripped apart physically in the process.
A fistula is an open hole that is created during labor that does not heal. This condition may leave its sufferers unable to control their bowels or bladder. It can be as debilitating socially as it is physically. These girls and women are often abandoned by the husbands who married them at such an early age and impregnated them, and they are shunned by their communities and their families because of this terrible physical condition.
Last December, I went to the Democratic Republic of Congo with Senator SAM BROWNBACK of Kansas. We went to the town of Goma, and in this town of Goma, we visited a hospital known as the Docs Hospital.
The Docs Hospital is kept open by the charity and giving of many churches around the world and in the United States. They have a surgical room which is one of the most professional you can imagine in that part of Africa, funded by the United Nations. Almost all of their work is on this condition of obstetric fistula. Young girls pregnant too soon, subjected to prolonged labor as a result, have this condition which haunts them. Girls who are the victims of sexual assault face the same possibility. Then, after they have been shunned by the families and their tribes, they sometimes walk for hundreds of miles to get to this tiny hospital in Goma.
As Senator Brownback and I approached this hospital, we saw these women lined up sitting in the dirt. They stood as soon as they saw our White faces and broke into songs of greeting, as one often finds in Africa. We looked at the long line of women waiting for their chance for surgery. When we talked to the surgeon, he said some of them will wait for months, and if they are lucky enough to have the surgery, they convalesce two to a bed in this crowded hospital ward. But the surgeon went on to tell us that even one surgery is not enough for many of these women. There are some women who have waited years, with repeated surgeries to try to correct this problem, a problem that would have been avoided for many of these women had they not been exploited at an early age and if they had not experienced pregnancies which they were not physically prepared to deal with or devastating sexual assaults.
We need to do more to help women and girls who are suffering from this condition, but we also need to do everything we can to prevent it--through access to family planning and medical care and encouraging communities to recognize the true social costs of child marriage. That is one of the goals of our legislation.
We are not trying to dictate to other countries what their laws will be. Child marriage, as I said earlier, is already illegal in most nations, and we are not trying to force our will on unwilling countries. But we are trying to promote change through community-based organizations that help local leaders and parents recognize the costs and horrors of child marriage.
In addition to the often devastating health consequences of early marriage, girls who are married are often denied opportunities to go to school. Girls' education is increasingly recognized as the critical element in economic growth and development. That is why it has been added as one of the criteria for countries to qualify for assistance through the multibillion-dollar program, the Millennium Challenge Account.
U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan has said that ``educating girls is not an option, it is a necessity.'' He is right. Girls' education is a recognized cornerstone of development, but 60 million girls in the world are denied access even to the most basic education. Others may start school but are far less likely to complete school than their brothers because of economic realities and the possibility of child marriage. Early marriage, as I said, is one of the reasons. Engagements and weddings frequently signal the end of school for the 10- or 11-year-old bride.
Lack of education has an enormous impact on the health, economic opportunity, and security of a nation. In Sub-Saharan Africa, children whose mothers have 7 years of education are twice as likely to see their fifth birthday as children of uneducated mothers. The children of mothers who attended school are also far more likely to attend school themselves. Just as early marriage helps to sustain cycles of poverty, education can break those cycles.
Our foreign assistance programs need to address the ways in which these issues are linked. The Child Marriage Prevention and Protection Act will, No. 1, require the State Department and USAID to create a comprehensive strategy to address child marriage as part of the U.S. development agenda; No. 2, require incorporation of this important issue within the annual State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices; No. 3, help countries enforce their existing child marriage laws; and No. 4, authorize $60 million over 3 years, starting with $15 million in the first year, as part of an integrated community-based approach to promote and support girls' education, health care, and opportunities.
Child marriage is part of a complex matrix of issues and attitudes. Last Sunday's New York Times, as I mentioned, described the situation in Afghanistan, and here is what they wrote:
Rather than a willing union between a man and a woman, marriage is frequently a transaction among families, and the younger the bride, the higher the price she may fetch.
The Times article stated:
Afghanistan is not alone in this predilection toward early wedlock. Globally, the number of child brides is hard to tabulate; they live mostly in places where births, deaths and human milestones go unrecorded. But there are estimates. About 1 in 7 girls in the developing world (excluding China) gets married before her 15th birthday--one in seven--according to analyses done by the Population Council, an international research group ..... Tens of millions of girls are having babies before their bodies are mature enough, increasing the likelihood of death from hemorrhaging, obstructed labor and other complications.
This article described one such wedding: a 13-year-old whose marriage was arranged to pay off a gambling debt.
The story also described the engagement of an 11-year-old girl to a 40-year-old man. They showed the photo. It was horrifying to think about that little girl, who was quoted in the story as saying she really didn't know this man. The girl in question said she had hoped to become a teacher. Instead, she will become an 11-year-old bride--one more girl in a faraway place in the world who has lost her chance for the future.
Child marriage is most common in the rural areas in the poorest countries. This practice perpetuates poverty.
Charlotte Ponticelli, who was then the senior coordinator for international women's issues for the State Department, laid out the case clearly. Ms. Ponticelli stated:
It is unconscionable that in the 21st century girls as young as 7 or 8 can be sold as brides. There is no denying extreme poverty is the driving factor that has enabled the practice to continue, even in countries where it has been outlawed ..... We need to be shining the spotlight on early marriage and its underlying causes ..... We must continue to do everything we can to ensure that girls have every opportunity to become agents of change and to expand the ``realm of what is possible'' for their societies and the world at large.
The legislation Senator Hagel and I will introduce is designed to support community-based efforts to support girls' education, discourage early marriage, and assist young girls and women already in marriage.
We invite our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join this bipartisan bill. Parents should never feel that marriage of their 11-year-old daughter is the best option for themselves or their children. With a little help from America and other countries around the world, perhaps we can make this a better choice for the daughters, the families, their nation, and the world.
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