A major report by Save the Children has found that one girl under the age of 15 is married every seven seconds. The study says girls as young as 10 are forced to marry much older men in countries including Afghanistan, Yemen, India and Ethiopia. Model Poppy Delevingne has been to Ethiopia to talk to some young girls about their experiences.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. Why is the reporter in Ethiopia?
2. How old was Selam when she was propositioned to get married?
3. What position is she at her school now?
4. How old was she when she married?
5. When did she get pregnant for the first time?
6. Why didn't Selam go to school after she got married?
We are here in beautiful Ethiopia, somewhere that I’ve always wanted to travel to since I was a little girl. And here we’re going to be investigating child marriage and female genital mutilation and the issues that concern us around these topics.
So, we've just arrived in …, which is a small village in Lalibela. This is where they run the Save the Children programme Keep It Real, and I'm going to be speaking to some young girls about child marriage.
Pleased to meet you, how are you?
Hi.
OK, so right now I am with the beautiful Selam. We are at her school, and she's just been telling me all about her stories about child marriage. She was 11 years old when she was propositioned to be married. And with the help of Save the Children's Keep it Real programme, she learned about all the problems within child marriage, and with the help of her brother and sister, they managed to persuade her parents that child marriage was not a good thing.
She is now at school, and is number one, number one in her class and she even told me that I should ask the teacher if that was true, and it was true.
Selam, I hear that you were married as a child. Would it be OK for me to come to your home and hear all about it?
So, I spent my afternoon with the lovely Selam, who was a victim of child marriage. When she was just 13 years old, she was married. By the time she was 14, she was pregnant with her first child, but when she was nine months pregnant, she left her husband as he was physically abusive, and moved back in with her family. But not only that, when she was engaged to him, he promised her that she would still have an opportunity to have an education, something he totally went back on, and instead, she did house chores and had to work unbearable hours, something a 13-year-old really shouldn't have to do. I have a 13-year-old cousin, and the idea of her getting married and then even next year having a baby, to me, is just... totally incomprehensible, and something that I can't believe
is happening in this world today still. Lovely Selam has got a bright future ahead of her, and it was truly an honour that she shared her story with me.
Key:
1 to investigate child marriage and female genital mutilation
2 eleven years old
3 number one
4 thirteen
5 at fourteen
6 she had to do house chores and worked very long hours
