Child Marriage in Bangladesh
University of Kent researcher, Dr. Zaki Wahhaj, looks into the consequences of child marriage in Bangladesh and how, in collaboration with international research partners, they can protect those at risk and their futures.
Transcript
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00:38 My name is Dr. Zaki Wahad and I'm a reader in economics at the University of Kent.
00:43 Since I arrived at the University of Kent in 2012, I have been doing work on child marriage.
00:49 This is an important issue in developing countries around the world.
00:53 About one in three women in developing countries experience marriage below the age of 18.
00:59 And this can have wide-ranging adverse consequences for themselves in terms of their education,
01:04 their future life outcomes, but also for their families and for the wider community.
01:10 He's part of a team trying to find out why this is happening and the consequences.
01:15 The aim is to end child marriage.
01:19 In many of these countries we find evidence that the older a bride is,
01:23 the higher is the dowry that her parents are required to pay.
01:27 And that is a strong economic driver for early marriage.
01:31 Girls are much more likely to drop out of school as a result of early marriage.
01:36 But at the same time it's important to emphasize that poverty is not the only factor.
01:41 The trends in Bangladesh, in India, in Nepal.
01:45 It's very much worth noting that culture still plays a very important influence
01:49 on marriage practices in these parts of the world.
01:52 And this culture can take the form of social pressures for early marriage.
01:57 Since 2018, Dr. Wahaj has collaborated with Mimoda Foundation,
02:03 a non-profit organization that operates a range of social development programs in northern Bangladesh.
02:10 And alongside Dr. Abu Parvez Shanchoy from Florida International University,
02:16 they designed an intervention aimed at reducing female early marriage in the region.
02:21 The intervention, informed by their previous research,
02:24 involves creating official birth records of adolescent girls
02:28 to provide them with better legal protection against early marriage.
02:37 My name is Abu Shanchoy. I'm an associate professor of economics
02:41 at Florida International University of the USA.
02:44 We took 240 villages in rural Bangladesh.
02:48 And some of the villages are randomly being chosen to receive universal birth certificate program.
02:55 Another set of group, we gave all the kids the birth certification.
03:00 Plus we gave them the helpline number.
03:03 And since we have executed the randomized control trial at the end of the study,
03:07 we can compare the rate of child marriage in those communities where nothing has been given.
03:14 And then we're going to compare that with those communities
03:17 where we have ensured universal birth registration system.
03:21 And then we also compare in the third group where we gave both.
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04:50 >> We also spoke with some other women who were a victim of child marriage like 10 years ago.
04:55 And what is their current condition?
04:57 They have low years of education.
05:00 So because of the marriage, they could not complete their schooling.
05:03 Many of these girls will become pregnant and will start bearing child at very early age of their life.
05:09 So at that time, physically and mentally, they are not mature enough to take such a big responsibility.
05:16 So that could lead to undernourished child and would lead to intergenerational poverty and intergenerational malnutrition.
05:28 So they are most likely have zero voice, zero agency,
05:33 and they do not get engaged in the household level decision making.
05:37 And this decision making could be like whether they would be able to get out of the house on their own,
05:42 whether they have any property right, how to manage their finances.
05:46 So all these things have deep consequences for the future generation.
05:51 >> The harmful effects of child marriage means that it's important to find new ways to tackle the problem.
05:58 And the research is beginning to provide some important insights that can lead to solutions.
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07:08 >> Schools are especially important to ending child marriage in Bangladesh.
07:13 By law, girls need a birth certificate to study there.
07:17 We visited a school who think education is crucial to help raise awareness.
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08:47 >> There have also been cases where fake birth registration certificates have been produced.
08:53 What a fake birth certificate means is that there is no digital presence of that record on the national database.
09:01 Part of what we have been doing is to inform families about how to register the births of their children,
09:07 particularly adolescent girls, to facilitate this process by taking them to the digital centers.
09:15 And in cases where they turn out to be fake, we are helping them to do the birth registration accurately
09:20 so that they have a genuine certificate for their adolescent daughters.
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10:48 >> We hope that the birth certificates that have been created as a result of the intervention is going to help the girls stay in school,
10:59 delay their marriage, and lead to other benefits.
11:04 We hope that the research is going to help design better programs, better interventions in rural Bangladesh
11:13 and in other developing countries with a similar setting.
11:17 It's very important to design these interventions in a culturally sensitive way so that we achieve the desired outcomes.
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