Teenage Rohingya girls– as young as 11– who fled to Myanmar are presently being married off to alleviate food shortage among their families.
About 700,000 refugees are currently being hosted by Bangladesh. Their lifestyles are reportedly confronted by numerous obstacles. Houses have been flooded in the lowlands, sanitation services are insubstantial, and diseases are getting rampant. But one of the major problems is feeding mouths for every member per household which is being solved by child marriage.
25 kilograms of rice are allotted by the World Food Program to households every two weeks; this, however, is based on the average family size of 5. Unfortunately, some families have more members which leads to the problem of food rations.
Last November, Getty Images photographer Allison Joyce, visited Rohingya families and captured moments when they were preparing their daughters on the day of their weddings. According to an interview by The Atlantic, Joyce stated that “ early marriage is a common cultural practice within the Rohingya Muslim communities in Myanmar with child marriages being extremely common among the ethnic minority group”.
One of the married couples that Joyce visited and interviewed was Abdul Karim, 20, and Arifa Begum ,16. Both were married in late November in a refugee camp. Abdul confessed that he did not want to get married until he returns to Myanmar due to unemployment. His father forced him to marriage due to the distributed food ration cards per individual family. Arifa also admitted that she did not have a choice because her family wishes to get her married
“I don’t have enough food to feed her. The camp is unsafe and marriage means safety. I’m not home to look after her all the time, now her new family looks after her and she’s not my responsibility anymore.” – Abdul Mabub, Arifa’s father
Amidst the ongoing crisis, hundreds of girls are separated from their families at this point which strikes a red alert for government organizations. Rohingya families are being forewarned by UN officials that ‘unaccompanied’ children who are being married off have a high chance of being victimized by trafficking. Jean Lieby , head of child’s protection at the UN children’s agency in Bangladesh, stated that this problem is a “major, major risk”.
“Young girls might enter into this type of trafficking and then end up in one of the big cities.”
Because of this, Bangladesh keeps its position as one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world.
