All over the world, today, beyond 650 million women and girls were married when they were still children. Minors. These are the latest data provided byUnicef, the humanitarian organization that underlines how the beginning of the pandemic, the closure of schools, economic stress and the interruption of services “have exposed the most vulnerable girls to the risk of early marriage».
It also happens in Italy, where the crime of forced marriage was introduced through the cd red code, but the law still allows, albeit in exceptional cases, child marriage from the age of 16. It is often thought that child brides, arranged marriages and forced marriages are something distant from us, which only concerns countries distant from our culture but it is not so.
It is important to make a distinction: arranged marriages are those in which the partner is not chosen by the families, however forced marriage it means the case in which one of the two or both partners are not consenting. Union is often achieved through violence.
As the survey points out Child Brides: Survey on child marriages in Italy, presented today December 10 in the Senate, on the occasion of World Human Rights Day, by the associations There is no Peace Without Justice (NPSG) and The Circle Italia Onlus, the tragedy of child marriages is global. It also finds space within communities of immigrants from countries where the practice is still widespread, but not exclusively: in the USA, for example, Unchained at last fight against early marriages, which are legal in several states. This organization estimated that 248,000 child marriages were celebrated in the US between 2000 and 2010, in some cases involving preteens up to 12 years of age.
In Italy, the data is lacking. Unions are not registered and when they are celebrated abroad they are not communicated to the Italian authorities. 41% of the victims of forced marriage have Italian citizenship; 59% are foreigners. There is no national observatory that can outline the certain boundaries of this phenomenon but there are investigations carried out, as in this case, by associations. “The only quantitative and qualitative study carried out expressly on early marriages”, reads the survey presented by There is no Peace Without Justice e The Circle Italia Onlus, «It is a research by the 21 July Association conducted in the slums of Rome, which shows that the prevalence of early marriages in resident Roma communities reaches 77%. As a reference, the country with the most forced marriages in the world is Niger, with an average prevalence of 76%, according to data published by the network Girls Not Brides.
12 million girls are victims of this violence every year. It is not necessary to go too far back in time to recall the case of a 9-year-old girl, Parwana, sold (and saved by an American NGO) by her father as a bride in Afghanistan, where one of the most serious humanitarian crises in the world is taking place. How many Parwana are we not aware of?
“Specific legislation is needed,” explain the associations There is no Peace Without Justice e The Circle Italia Onlus. “Act on several fronts to prevent and combat this serious violation of the human rights of minors and assist the victims”.
Other stories of Vanity Fair that may interest you:
–Forced marriages, how many Samans are there in our country?
-Sumaya Abdel Qader: “My rebellious and feminist veil”
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