Should we respect all traditional, cultural and religious norms?

There was a disturbing report out of Yemen these last few days, of an 8 year old girl, a child bride, who was married to her 40 year old groom and who died in horrific circumstances on her wedding night.

An eight-year-old Yemeni girl has died of internal bleeding on her wedding night after marrying a man five times her age, a social activist and two local residents said, in a case that has caused an outcry in the media and revived debate about child brides.

Arwa Othman, head of Yemen's House of Folklore and a leading rights campaigner, said the girl, identified only as Rawan, was married to a 40-year-old late last week in the town of Meedi in Hajjah province, north-western Yemen.

"On the wedding night and after intercourse, she suffered from bleeding and uterine rupture which caused her death," Othman said. "They took her to a clinic but the medics couldn't save her life."

Othman said authorities had not taken any action against the girl's family or her husband.

A security official in the provincial town of Haradh denied any such incident had taken place. He did not want to be identified because he was not authorised to speak to the press.

But two Meedi residents contacted by Reuters confirmed the incident and said tribal chiefs had tried to cover up the incident when the news broke, warning a local journalist against covering the story.​

The UN offers some fairly terrifying projections for child brides and child marriages for the future, if the current rate is any indication. With most child marriages happening in Sub-Sahara African countries and in some parts of Asia, the current figures are bad enough. But it shows no signs of lessening:

More than 140 million girls will become child brides by 2020 if current rates of early marriage continue, according to the UN.

Of that number of girls aged under 18, 50 million will be younger than 15, says the UN Population Fund, which co-hosted a panel on child marriage at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) on Thursday.

Although rates of child marriage vary between and within countries, most take place in rural sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.

In south Asia, nearly half of young women are married by their 18th birthday. In sub-Saharan Africa the figure is more than one-third.

Nine of the 10 countries with the highest rates of child marriage are in Africa. Niger has the highest rate, at 75%, followed by Chad and Central African Republic at 68%, Guinea at 63%, Mozambique at 56%, Mali with 55%, Burkina Faso and South Sudan with 52%, and Malawi at 50%. The 10th country is Bangladesh, with 66%.​

Along with issues such as female genital mutilation, and some would include male circumcision as well, should such religious and cultural norms be respected?

With child marriage and with child circumcision, the response from defenders of such practices is that it is a part of their tradition, religious and cultural history and the practice continues today because this is how it is done. That we, as the West and outsiders, who campaign to end such practices, are infringing on their rights to practice their cultural and/or religious customs as they are free to practice them. And many rebuke the West or outsiders of trying to force change, and when one considers the actions of the West in these countries in the past, any demands or outside pressure will be viewed with derision and disgust, but should we remain silent and not try to force change for all traditions? Even in cases of child marriage and child genital mutilation, for example?

Lubabatu Ammani, a statistics director from Zamfara state, north-west Nigeria, said: "The fact is, a lot of people [here], when they hear the campaigning is by people from a different tradition or religion, they won't agree with it."​

Is it right to disagree because those demanding change are outsiders?

In Nigeria, for example, child marriage is illegal. However many bypass the law which protects the rights of the child, and continue to practice child marriage.

With child marriage, many cite poverty as a reason. Girls from very poor family can yield their parents much needed funds if she is married off to someone wealthy, who then pays the family for their daughter's hand in marriage. It is a form of child selling, where young girls are deemed to be a source of income for the poverty stricken family. However there are other reasons, such as customs and social norms of the region, and even social pressures:

A sense of social insecurity has been a cause of child marriages across the world. For example, in Nepal, parents fear likely social stigma if grown-up adult girls (past 18 years) stay at home. Other fear of crime such as rape, which not only would be traumatic but may lead to less acceptance of the girl if she becomes victim of a crime.[20] In other cultures, the fear is that an unmarried girl may engage in illicit relationships,[21] or elope causing a permanent social blemish to her siblings, or that the impoverished family may be unable to find bachelors for grown up girls in their economic social group. Such fears and social pressures have been proposed as causes that lead to child marriages. Extreme poverty, in many cases, makes teenage girls feel like an economic burden to a poor family; early marriage is a way to reduce that economic burden. In many parts of Africa, marrying girls early brings income through brideprice - a payment that the groom makes to the bride's family to gain the right to marry and consummate the marriage. Child marriages of girls in exchange for payment becomes an incentive, a way out of desperate economic conditions, or simply a source of income to the parents.​

If we are to look at religious laws and secular laws, it is not just the one. If one were to follow Cannon Law, for example, the Vatican sets the age for girls at 14 years of age. As the wiki link states above, Spain's legal age for marriage is 14 years of age, with parental consent, and in some parts of America, girls under 16 can still marry with court and parental consent. So is the West in any position to dictate or lecture other countries about child marriage?

Should we, as a global society, be too afraid to tiptoe around such issues, because to protest or demand change is to insult people's cultural, traditional and religious beliefs?

To put it into some perspective, of just how dangerous child marriages can be for young girls, if the latest case in Yemen was not bad enough:

The issue is viewed as a major health challenge and is a key part of the country's wider efforts to cut maternal mortality rates. Malawi's maternal mortality rate is 675 for every 100,000 live births a year. The Malawi health minister, Catherine Gotani Hara, said a recent national health survey revealed that most of those women who died were between the ages of 15 and 19.

"Our biggest worry is that where women are getting married early, it is causing a lot of maternal deaths," she told the Guardian. "We have one of the highest rates in the world. President [Joyce] Banda says this is something we don't want to see. Birth should not be a death sentence to women … we need to end early marriage. It has a serious effect on social and health aspects."

According to the UN, complications from pregnancy and childbirth are the leading causes of death for girls between the ages of 15 and 19 in poorer countries. Stillbirths and deaths of newborn babies are 50% higher among mothers under the age of 20 than among women who get pregnant in their 20s.​

Those who do not die can go on to have severe issues with their reproductive organs and also their bodies as well:

Not surprisingly, early marriage often leads to early childbirth, and the health consequences for mother and baby can be devastating, says Saifuddin Ahmed, PhD '96, an assistant professor in Population, Family and Reproductive Health (PFRH), who has worked extensively in Bangladesh. Many girls, their young hips still narrow, labor for days without medical assistance. If the baby's head presses against the walls of the birth canal for too long, it cuts off the blood supply and causes the mother's tissue to die, creating a hole called a fistula. Most obstetrical fistulas form between the vagina and the bladder/urethra, causing a woman to become incontinent and constantly leak urine.

Many people who live in areas where fistulas are a problem—such as the "Fistula Belt," just south of the Sahara, including Niger, Nigeria and Ethiopia—are not only poor, but often must travel for days to reach a hospital. Almost 90 percent of the children delivered during these prolonged labors are stillborn, says Ahmed. And without a child, the bond between husband and wife frequently dissolves.

While fistulas can usually be repaired through surgery, the relatively high cost ($300 per repair) puts the procedure out of reach of many impoverished women in these regions, Ahmed notes. Concerned that most research to date has focused on fistula repair, rather than prevention, he undertook one of the first studies to identify the risk factors for fistula. (Collaborators on the study included doctoral candidate Andreea Creanga, and Amy Tsui, PhD, a PFRH professor and director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health.)

The Bloomberg School researchers found that the greatest risk was for girls whose first pregnancy was before age 18, increasing again for girls who gave birth before 15. Because most of these deliveries take place without skilled medical care, it is difficult to know exactly how many girls develop a fistula during labor and delivery, says Ahmed.​

So the question remains, should we continue to respect cultural, traditional and religious norms when the results can be death, mutilation and pain and fear for the victims of these traditions?

While many, myself included, promote education to help combat this, is it enough? Or is it a matter of too little too late and we are too busy to not try to insult people's religion, traditions and cultures, that we are simply hoping they will one day come around?

 

I suppose I should have put tolerate and respect.

But we have pussy footed around such issues, and I don't just mean child brides, female genital mutilation or as you correctly identified as well, dancing boys in Afghanistan, but extend to child soldiers, child labour, selling children to pay off debt so the child goes into slavery.

These are all identified as being cultural and traditional. Along the lines of 'this is how it has always been' and as soon as we hear the words cultural or traditional or even religious, we tend to back off pushing other countries from curtailing such practices.

Sure, we will talk about it from the comforts of our own homes and decry the practices as barbaric and we hope that empowering girls, boys, women and men to force change, we have not exactly been successful.

Russ pointed out the protection of women and girls and boys and men in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (and the Bill of Rights - which only applies in the US). However Article 18 provides:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.​

While the whole notion of child brides contradicts Article 16, which states that men and women of full age when it comes to marriage, what about in countries or communities where one's religion or cultural tradition dictates when a girl or boy is ready for marriage by their maturity when they begin to menstruate, for example?

In the news today, a father in Yemen has joined the charge to end child marriage in Yemen, after he described how he had sold his 12 year old girl and his younger daughter to their respective husbands to pay off his debts. He describes how he threatened to kill his 12 year old daughter if she did not marry as he had ordered her two, when she refused. While the very notion of selling one's child off to marry for money is abhorrent to the majority, how is this cultural tradition allowed to continue? And should it?

Women as commodities is not an uncommon thing. However, the issues of child brides and female genital mutilation and dancing boys in Afghanistan, for example, are deemed cultural and traditional aspects of life in their respective communities and any push from the West and even from within the respective countries is met with resistance, because this is how it has always been done.

In some parts of Pakistan, for example, girls are sold to marriage at a very young age, usually to settle feuds (this also happens in other parts of the world as well). This is deemed a tribal tradition. Many who do follow such traditions explain that their religious text allows it if the girl shows maturity and is physically fit (and usually when she has started to menstruate).

And child brides also happens in countries like Mexico, where girls who are pregnant or their parents discover they are having sex are being forced into marriage by the time they are 14 years of age.

Certainly, education is key, but what happens in the meantime? The effects of education will only affect some, and not all. And it can take generations for change to filter through.

But at the core of this issue is the fact that we tend to run the other way when we hear words like religious tradition and cultural tradition or norm. Why do we simply accept it on those grounds while desperately hoping they will come to change?

 

Depends on your attitude about national sovereignty, doesn't it? Do we have the right to dictate how people in other countries live? Even if a majority of the residents disagree with the laws or traditions, what can we actually do to change them?

The USA has spent the last half-century bullying our way into other nations and attempting to change the way their people live. Can anyone name just one of these countries where the outcome was worth the bloodshed, economic hardship, political destabilization, and/or anti-American hatred it created? We now live in a quasi-police state, in which the government spies on our phone calls and airport guards have become the Gestapo, specifically because we've pissed off so many people in our attempts to improve the lives of other people (or even themselves), to the extent that several of them blew up our largest building and killed 3,000 of us.

Maybe we just have to be patient and wait for electronic technology to enlighten people, facilitate their organization, and empower them to change their own lives. Including the time-honored tactic of simply emigrating to a country with a more humane culture.