25 August 2021, NIICE Commentary 7310
Faria Rahman
Since the beginning of the lockdown of March 2020, till today the pandemic caused by Coronavirus has shown us how helpless we can be even with so many advancements, technologies and development policies. The impact on our society is beyond our imagination. For a developing country like Bangladesh, the effects of COVID-19 were out of boundaries. It has made thousands of people jobless, increased poverty, damaged the education system, ruined mental health and had many other sparks of it. However, among all these side-effects of COVID-19 to this society, one of the major negative outcomes is the increased number of child marriage in the country.
Bangladesh, as a third world country, had a praiseworthy development in terms of achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It also reduced the percentage of child marriage to a notable number. Unfortunately, the pandemic has broken all the hard works. Department of Gender Justice and Diversity of the largest NGO BRAC has found that 13 percent of child marriage has increased last year as an impact of COVID-19 which is the highest rate in last 25 years. According to another research by an organization Manusher Jonno Foundation (MJF), by October 2020 at least 13,886 female children were the victim of child marriage where 50.6 percent were about 16-17 years old and the rest 47.7 percent were more younger aging 13-15. Sanjida Orni, a college student from Pirojpur Government Women’s College, Barisal, is currently 17 years old. She said, almost 50 percent of her classmates have been married off including the top students of her batch. And after their marriage they do not attend classes regularly anymore. However, she feels lucky that her mother supports education over marriage and helps her to get her tuitions.
The usual curiosity that comes to mind is, how COVID-19 ended up rising the child marriage rate of a country. Unfortunately, the answer is, it was very much predictable for a middle-income country like Bangladesh. To tackle the spread of Coronavirus, government put a strict lockdown throughout the country. At first people were not much serious about closing their workplaces but from time to time through the rising number of Covid affected cases government were bound to put a strict lockdown. Even though it was an unavoidable necessary step, it resulted in massive amount of unemployment. Many offices and businesses were shut down, many lost their jobs and many other had jobs but with a very low income. It directly had an effect on the education of children at their homes. The male children were sent to do any available child labors and girls were mostly married off. Marrying off their child, without considering their age, may seemed an easy solution to their problems, but in reality, it is the start of many other risks. Girls married early face unsafe sexual practices, early pregnancy, sexual and physical violence and so on. Restrictions in the transport due to lockdown is also causing difficulties for girls to get health care or any social services to avoid marriage or any physical problems.
A report in March 2021 of UNICEF has published that, before the end of the decade there is a risk of 10 million additional child marriage cases. Tomoo Hozumi, UNICEF Representative in Bangladesh stated, “Despite significant progress in recent years, Bangladesh has the fourth highest prevalence of child marriage in the world. COVID-19 compounds the difficulties facing millions of girls to school closures, isolation from friends and support networks, and rising poverty places girls at heightened risk of child marriage”.
Another reason of children falling off from education was the uneven access to different logistics. Government of Bangladesh has arranged classes on a national TV channel for students of all classes. And that channel does not require any cable network or dish line. However, a study on the secondary school students gives us the information that, more than a third of the children do not have access to a television and even if they have access, they do not follow it. Another study by BRAC shows that, many private schools have arranged online classes but due to the limitations of logistics like smartphone, computer, electricity, cable network, or internet connection almost 56 percent of the students cannot join those virtual classes. Not being able to get education properly, in addition to lower income for a long period of time, creates a huge influence on marrying off the female children of the families.
Child marriage is illegal. Even if we consider the poor situations of the families, this could be prevented with proper law enforcement. The existing laws and rules are not followed properly and they have failed completely to prevent child marriages from happening. The Additional Secretary at the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, Mohiuddin Ahmed, had denied the circumstance and disagreed with the information and data provided by the NGOs about child marriage. He said, “We also heard that child marriages and family violence have risen in the pandemic but there is no government survey or study on child marriage”. This kind of negligence is a major reason for a country for not being able to prevent such social problems.
The women and girls of Bangladesh are already facing many kinds of disadvantages. They see discrimination in family, society, job sectors and also face mental and physical violence in many spheres of their lives. Still, there is a chance for them to get in a better and higher position with proper education. But if they are married off at an early age and do not get chance to complete their education, this is not only a personal harm rather a huge contradiction for the development of the whole country. For Bangladesh, to cope up with such damage will take very long time to recover.
