Child marriage in Bangladesh

Each year, an estimated 12 million girls aged under the age of 18 marry against their will. These girls are usually from a poor family, and they are deprived of an education, have little in terms of opportunities, and they remain in poverty themselves. For them, childbirth is the leading cause of death.

In this episode of Human Rights Magazine, Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam explores the situation of child marriage in Bangladesh.

The cover photo is of adolescent girls participating in a BRAC Social Empowerment and Legal Protection program.

Human Rights Magazine is produced by The Upstream Journal magazine. The host, Derek MacCuish, is editor of both. If you agree that informed reporting on human rights and social justice issues is important, your support would be welcome. Please rate the podcast wherever you listen to it, and tell your friends about episodes that you find interesting. Why not consider making a financial contribution to help us cover costs?  You are always welcome to email with your comments.

Transcript

Derek MacCuish:  Each year, an estimated 12 million girls aged under the age of 18 marry against their will.

These girls are usually from a poor family, and they are deprived of an education, have little in terms of opportunities, and they remain in poverty themselves. For them, childbirth is the leading cause of death.

In this episode of Human Rights Magazine, Dasheeni Joud Selva ratnam explores the situation of child marriage in Bangladesh.

Multiple audio clips combined 

Girls because if they have a goat their economic value rises significantly and sometimes that's all that's needed. 

Kind of like you know Elvis and Priscilla, like she was kind of his essentially his muse.

And it indicates the movement of their rejecting early marriage as a social norm.

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam: 

UNICEF estimates that 51% of women in Bangladesh, now aged 20-24, will have gotten married before 18 in 2025. 

While child marriage is a human rights violation, these young girls and young boys continue to be overlooked. Today’s podcast will explore why child marriage prevails in Bangladesh and possible solutions to be implemented, especially in rural areas. 

I spoke with three individuals who are well-versed in the difficulties of child marriage in Bangladesh. The first is an expert in child marriage, Noemi Grossen. 

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Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

I first spoke to Noemi Grossen over Zoom, who is the director and programme manager for Afghanistan and Bangladesh of Women’s Hope International based in Switzerland. Receiving a degree in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, Noemi has been with Women’s Hope International since 2022. Women’s Hope International was founded in 1999 by Swiss doctor Martin Leimgruber and midwife Claudia Leimgruber when they encountered a young girl in Chad suffering from a birth injury called fistula, encouraging them in 2003 to open Women’s Hope International to support and tackle the causes of women affected by fistula. 

This is the discussion with Noemi Grossen on her work with Women’s Hope International. She explains her role in Women’s Hope International in support. 

Noemi Grossen

We follow a rather localised approach. We only work with local organisations. So basically, I support our partners when needed. I try to give them the lead in the project development whatsoever. And we more or less try to play a quality assurance role and secure the financing that we can continue with our programs. 

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam 

As research had demonstrated there is a prediction of a rise in child marriage cases. Noemi explains the second phase of their research of a child marriage project in June they concluded evaluating intervention. Their results concluded a modern shift, phones have become a leading cause in higher rates of child marriage. 

Noemi Grossen

There's, I would say, the numbers do not go down as we would have expected. And how they went down with similar approaches in the past years. And of course, we try to dig deeper. And as I said, certain things also do not come unexpectedly. And I think one of the big driving forces of raising numbers again is the phone. 

Younger girls are contacted usually by peers or boys not much older than them and lured basically into relations. There is quite a high number of younger girls that were reportedly escaping to get married to these contacts they got through the phone. That's one thing. 

Another thing related to the phone is that the parents, I mean the prevention aspects, were there from the very beginning. That the parents think if they marry off their daughters young, also their sons, but for the daughters particularly, that it's a form of protecting them. And that protection aspect increased seemingly when it comes to when they realised that their daughter has a contact via phone whatsoever.

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam 

While the phone is a key element, other factors continue to play a role in child marriage. Noemi explains the impacts cultural norms and religion have. 

Noemi Grossen

It's difficult. They come into play, surely. But I would say that poverty and tradition is a much bigger factor because we work in Northwestern Bangladesh in communities from different religions. We have Santals, we have Hindus, we have Muslim and Catholic communities. The numbers do not really make a big difference. But religion in so far is a important aspect as the CAHDIs are key stakeholders to get on board when you want to tackle the issue of child marriage.

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

Further, the legal framework is in Bangladesh is a tricky aspect in child marriage prevention. 

Noemi Grossen

No, I mean, Bangladesh would have the necessary legal framework. It's just not implemented and quite, or a challenge is that we also need to bring the police on board that they enforce it and not protect child marriage, which is challenging. But in terms, I mean, for the legal frameworks the majority of the countries, except maybe for the U.S., they have a very strict child marriage law in place and it's not enforced. 

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

I asked Noemi if it wasn’t enforced because of cultural norms or lack of care.

Noemi Grossen

I would want to look into an officer's brain. I would say it's both. There's certainly some level of lack of knowledge. And there's certainly cultural aspects and traditional aspects because these people come from within the communities. And I mean, it's so unbelievably widespread in Bangladesh I mean, it's unfortunately one of the top ranking countries and even with the highest in Asia. It's so common. It needs time to change. 

But we have activities to work with the various legal stakeholders being the police but also the they call them marriage registers. Because it's not legal. There's a rather widespread tactic of false birth certificates. And that's also where we come in. We also work with health centers that they do or that it can be better ensured that girls have a proper birth certificate from the beginning. 

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

Women’s Hope International follows a very localised approach, and Noemi explains the approaches they take to continue prevention. 

Noemi Grossen

We really, really try to address the root causes. And we base it on an approach that was originally developed by Save the Children. And it's called Voices, Choices, Promises. And the main idea is that at the end of the day, we do want to have a behavioral change. We want to change the perception of girls, the value of these young women. So we involve at community level as many people as possible. So we have sessions with girls usually like from 12 to 18. 

We have the same session or similar session with the boys because they need to be brought on board as well. We talk also about the masculinity issues, to put it a bit broad, but they quite often have a certain perception of how they need to be as a man and what is good. 

And we have sessions with the mothers, we have sessions with the fathers and with the fathers, we also have a particular approach where we try to get in each community champion fathers who really support their daughters to pursue their educational career, who pledge not to sign them off before 21 whatsoever, so that they become a role model basically. 

And we have sessions with the influential group in the community. There we have teachers included because teachers are quite the good ally for the project staff because they know what's happening in the village, they know what's happening in the family. We have businessmen who also can become role model. We have imams, if possible. We have qadis. So whoever plays a role, we have the religious leaders on board wherever possible. It's really, we try to tackle it from the various angles.

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

The local NGOs aim to engage participation, though nothing can be forced. 

Noemi Grossen

No, it's you can't really enforce them and we don't have a say over them and I would say the impact would be significantly reduced if we would force them because they need to be there out of free will. But saying so, it's a challenge. We need to do a lot of awareness raising before in the communities to get the people on board. That's not easy. And particularly with that, the father's group also during harvest time. or we have many because it's the poorest strata of the population we work with. We deal with many day laborers and if they have a job, they will not show up.

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

To wrap up our conversation, I asked Noemi about any concerns or hopes she has regarding the future of child marriage within the next 10-15 years. 

Noemi Grossen

Yeah, I do have concerns because it's also linked to the global events that funds are cut going to WHO, going to UNFPA, for us the main, the most important agencies and that we already feel at project level. But Bangladesh made huge efforts to reduce the birth rates. Unbelievable what they achieved. And they have a very well-established family planning services at local level. And they are impacted by all the cuts because Bangladesh had quite a lot of funds channeled through the government from WHO and UNFPA. And UNFPA has so severe budget cuts. I really struggle because we see the impact already. And in general, with the global gender backlash, I'm struggling to remain very positive at the moment. 

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Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

Advocacy is important and Noemi Grossen is not alone is wanting child marriage to end. Suraiya Begum a child bride originally from Barisal Bangladesh now residing in Toronto spoke to me about how child marriage should be prevented. I spoke to Suraiya and her granddaughter Barira Manzoor over zoom to learn about their story. 

Suraiya's life halted when she became a child bride at the age of 15. What she thought her teenage years would be of studying and achieving her dreams of being a doctor shifted to studying and taking care of her children. Suraiya explains her childhood.

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

Barira translated her grandmother's thoughts from Bangla to English.

Gradual shift from Bangla to English - Suraiya Begum speaking

Barira Manzoor

She was born in Barishal, which is another village in Bangladesh. She was born in a village in Bangladesh. And she lived there for a couple years and then her father was in the army, so she moved to Pakistan. And then after that, she moved back to Dhaka to do her schooling. 

My grandmother was always very ambitious from the start. She was the boss. She did well in everything that she could. She was the best student in the class. She was the best sports person. Basically, she did everything she could. She tried everything, and she excelled in everything because that's what she wanted to do. And ultimately, her goal was to become a doctor. That was her life. That was what she worked towards. She was the oldest of her siblings, first born daughter, because of that she she channeled a lot of like responsibility she was you know the person depend upon she was the person to do everything and she did everything because she could that was her so she was the boss lady from the start. 

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

Suraiya got married at the age of 15. Her family was convinced. She was distraught. 

Barira Manzoor

It was very scary for her. But then her aunt, her dad's sister, convinced the family to get her married. Basically, she was like, she talked to my grandfather side of the family, and was like, he's very successful. He needs to get married, and he's going to let her study.

He’s going to let her pursue her education but he just wants to get married to her because he likes her and you we'd like it if you agreed and finally her father agreed and it was not a matter of that she just eventually agreed herself it was like her father agreed so he said he got her married that was the predicament so at 15 years old she was married off. 

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

Suraiaya faced a number of challenges getting married so young, including falling pregnant at the age of 16. 

Barira Manzoor

My grandmother has always been a boss lady. She’s always been tough as nails. She took on this marriage even though she was extremely scared. She’s 15 years old. She took it on with the attitude that I don’t care what anyone says, I don’t care what my husband says. No matter the circumstance, she will fight for what she wants. She told him straight up as soon as they moved in, “I'm gonna study, I'm gonna get my education, I want to do what I want”. He took on this relationship not just as like a husband wife like they weren't like a marriage. He was more like a mentor to her. He really cared for her like he would support her throughout all her ambitions, like no matter what, he was always there. He told her to pursue her classes and become a doctor, and also be a housewife. She did everything. 

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

Suraiaya’s husband was 20 years her senior, so she had to find ways to adapt to her new life. Suraiaya gives us her thoughts on the potential expectations placed on her and maturity levels throughout their marriage. 

Barira Manzoor

He gave her a lot of respect upon the relationship. A lot of people assume that a child bride is, they'll get scared, or they won't know how to handle things, but from the get-go, he made joint accounts with them. He treated her like an equal. She describes it as she treated her like a child, like somebody he had to protect and whatever, but it was more out of respect. It was more out of, okay, you're my wife now, I'm gonna treat you like you're not somebody subordinate to me that I have to look down upon, but somebody that I have to bring up my level, that I have to bring you know to become an equal with me, so that was his thing. 

And as for your question about expectations the only expectation was to just be his equal and to be for him to support and for them to be like on the level. 

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

Their family comes from a long line of family marriage. Both Suraiaya and Barira explain initiatives that must be taken to mitigate child marriage. 

Barira Manzoor

If you find yourself in this position, like my grandmother did, where you were forced to get married, she believes that it would be best if we could empower all girls to feel incentivised to just fight back against their partner and to be brave. That is her perspective on it.  

And then generally, though, we should raise a culture, we should be able to set up systems in Bangladesh where women's education, that is what is most preserved. That is what is most cherished. Like women's education, which also allows women to be strong and to build a life for themselves. 

It's interesting as a question because I feel like in societies like Dhaka, Bangladesh, or places where I grew up, women's education is valued. Education is valued. And women are being more independent. And child marriage is an epidemic that we are facing, but it's contained in areas that are neglected, it's contained in areas that are not kind of, the focus isn't put on them. 

And so I think that as a culture, we need to tackle the bigger institutions, the bigger base problem. We need to start focusing on respecting women, focusing on improving sectors where women dominate because, and also just creating spaces for women. Through empowering women as a whole, we can create a culture where child marriage or like any kind of forced marriage is not something that's essential. 

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

Barira is 19 years old and is studying at McGill University as an economics and political science major. Though she did not experience child marriage, both of her grandmothers experienced child marriage, and it has influenced aspects of her life. 

Barira Manzoor

It was shocking. When she told me about this, what shocked me the most was finding out the age difference, and it was unfathomable for me because I was 10 or 12 years old when she told me, and I was like, " Wait. I was aware of it happening, but to hear about it from somebody so close to me, it became more real. Like, I felt so upset, and I was like, " Why did she have to go through this. 

It was shocking, and as someone who comes from it, it's not normal, but you'll hear a lot of people from Bangladesh speaking about it as if it's just another part of our culture. It's not, it's not getting there. We're changing as a society. 

For my mom specifically, my grandfather told her to become a lawyer. He was very much a proponent of getting her getting to be educated. 

She took care of my grandfather; she took care of her whole family. She raised her youngest brother, and because of that, and because she had to be there for her family, she couldn’t go abroad and study, because she wanted to be a lawyer elsewhere. She had to stay and do business. She got a 4.0 GPA, she got many jobs like every single job she applied to she got it. She would have worked for International organisations, but she decided to give it up for me. She did so many things just because that's how she was raised her parents motivated her like they didn't even consider child marriage to be an essential part anymore because again society was changing at the time. I feel like it became more progressive and because of that because these two as a unit were such a force of like empowerment for women they forced her to become a strong woman and then my mom went even further. 

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

To end off the conversation I asked Barira about ways her mother or family mitigated young/child marriage, encouraging her to be a strong, powerful woman.

Barira Manzoor

Like for me, like my mom, I was raised under the, for the first 18 years of my life, my mom was like, you do not look in the direction of boys. You look directly at your school. You will graduate. You will get a job. You will do, you will be an independent, you will be a functionary society before you would think about marriage. 

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Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

To learn more about child marriage in Bangladesh, I spoke with Dr Shaila Ahmed, Assistant Professor at BRAC University, Research Fellow, and Head of the Gender and Social Development cluster at BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD). 

Dr Ahmed began our conversation with an overview of child marriage in Bangladesh. 

Shaila Ahmed

If I give you the context of child marriage, so currently in 2022’s data, according to 2022’s data, it's 51 percent the child marriage rate has increased and now it's 51 percent. So it is one of the highest in South Asia. So, after the COVID, it was around 28 to 30 percent before the COVID, but after the COVID, it has increased and it's a lot. That means the increase is around 20, 21 percent. 

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

Dr. Ahmed told me how COVID-19 exacerbated rates of child marriage in Bangladesh, through the drop-our rate of children and teenagers. 

Shaila Ahmed

During the COVID time, the girls get dropout from the school and then when they get dropped out from school, so most of the parents for the boys, it is just entering into the child labor. But for the girls, the parents feel like because that's the time when they had an economic shock as well so that's why parents thought to marry off their daughter. So it will reduce a little bit economic burden from their family as well. And as they got dropped out from school, so there is nothing to do for the girls to be at home. So it's better that they marry off their daughter. So this is the current picture.

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

Social norms are the primary cause of child marriage. 

Shaila Ahmed

The main reason behind it is social norm, people's belief and then if we can see according to the data, we are going to see it more in rural Bangladesh than the urban area. And in rural area, most marriages are arranged, around 89 % marriages are arranged and there is, the dowry is just universal, it's 85 % girls married off and their parents need to give dowry to the boy's family. 

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

Dr Ahmed explains the research she is part of at BRAC in the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development program. 

Shaila Ahmed

Coincidentally, these two researches are basically on the same topic and very much similar. One is done by BRAC. It's BRAC Social Empowerment and Legal Protection Program so in short, they say it's SELP. So BIGD is doing the research evaluation of that project so they have done, suppose like in 31 districts in Bangladesh and then around 11,200 girls, age within the range of 13 to 17 is our sample age limit. 

The design of that project was one is we are seeing the girls group whom we are giving the swapnosarothi which is the name of the life skill club. So, Swapnosarothi is one arm. 

And then for comparing there is another cash arm which is low cash arm where we are giving 600 taka per month to that girl if they come and participate in that club. 

And there is another one is high cash. It's 1000 taka per month. 

And then fourth one is the control one. 

So we have done the baseline and also after baseline the cash rollout is already done, the midline is already done and we are waiting to do the inline in this December 2025. 

So from this participation, we have seen that it's 84% take up of this from this program and also cash incentive improved the session attendance. The moment they know that they will participate the program and then they will get the cash and the cash are going to be distributed among the older girls. So there’s incentive to attend the session is increased and then 65 % of girls basically decide how to spend their cash. It's like mainly they are using for their own purpose, for their education, and something like this. So it's like from this thing we can see that they are getting empowered because the cash they are getting, so the parents are not taking that money from them. 

And also from this program, till now, from the midline analysis, the key finding is attitude toward gender equality has changed. That means when they are participating in these type of program, their gender equitable attitude is changing and then they think and they feel more empowered. 

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

There was a discussion on social media and whether this has impacted the rates of child marriage. 

Shaila Ahmed

We wanted to see whether the social media use have any impact on the girls' elopement or their parental fear of their daughters using this social media and they get afraid of these things and then they marry off their daughter. 

So our hypothesis was definitely parents are very concerned when their daughters are using this social media. From these anxieties, parents are very much scared, and they feel some risk of elopement and social scandal. So we were thinking it’s very much associated with digital exposure with risk of elopement and social scandal, and maybe it can lead to pre-emptive child marriage. 

But when we did the baseline and also the midline data, we get that it's not significant that parents are afraid of this thing and the preemptive social child marriages getting more. Our hypothesis is basically wrong. 

So at the baseline, parents of girls using social media were around 45 % more likely to fear elopement, but in the midline, the fear get decreased because when the girls have enrolled in this type of program and then parents see that from this type of program, they are getting different type of livelihood training and then they are knowing about the social norm and then the cultural communities and cultural system and all of the things. With time, the fear of the parents about the elopement decreased. The perceived risk of getting married off the daughters also decrease. 

Also, we get that the social media use did not increase overall marriage rates. So, girls using social media were around 39 % more likely to marry a man of their own choice. So slightly rise in marriage, arrange out of parental fear of elopement but still not that significant. As I said that the parents' fear alone with the digital use did not, that means predict marriage. 

So we can see that these type of program, the swapnosarothi type of program where we can give them any life training along with the cash transfer can reduce child marriage around 16%. We get in our program around 16% and 16% is a lot. Then also the elopement rate has decreased and fear driven marriage also decreased. There are some improvement in child marriage scenario in Bangladesh. 

Host Dasheeni Joud Selvaratnam

I asked Dr Ahmed about the legal frameworks in Bangladesh in child marriage mitigation. 

Shaila Ahmed 

It's a social problem and you cannot just tackle this program only in one way. So there are all type of measure is taken. The government is doing there are law that if you are marrying off your daughter before 18 or the groom's family is getting a bride before 18, so both party will be jailed and will get punishment. Even the qazi who is doing this marriage process so that qazi is also going to get punished 

But it's not working because, as I said, it's a social norm. The people it is in their mind that what they are doing is right. So sometime they give example about the religion, they sometime talk about the income, and poverty and all of the things. 

Their neighbor are helping them to do it. There are government laws so if someone from the village just informed the law enforcement people, they come and stop the marriage, so what their parents are doing that they are taking their daughter to different village to their relatives house and there they are marrying their daughter off from that place. 

So no one will get know that they are doing that and definitely the law enforcement people are not going to get this information. So this is the way it works. 

So there are law but it's not working. There are advocacy programs from different NGOs, government, and all other international NGOs but it's not working. So as I said, it's social norms so you cannot just stop those things by enforcing law. 

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Host: 

While child marriage rates have increased since COVID-19, from around 29% to 51% in 2025, there is still hope in mitigating these rates. Professionals and researchers such as Noemi Grossen and Dr. Shaila Ahmed is worried about the rates and how the current socioeconomic political structure will affect the rates. Considering the lack of funding and poor legislation, it is concerning how anything will improve. Yet, solutions including education, BIDG studies, also known as BRAC Institute of Governance and Development studies, international and local help, will improve the rates of child marriage. 

Dr Ahmed concludes our conversation, saying we need to make people aware of the negative impacts of child marriage, but with time, the norm will change. In 15 to 20 years, there will be a change in the system, and while we are unaware of which method will be best, as long as there are multi-dimensional approaches from local, government, and international actors, there will be justice.