Korea's role in ending child marriage in Bangladesh

By Phil Robertson and Heather Barr

“Before the house is swept away you should get her married,” a neighbor said to Khushi’s mother. Khushi (not her real name) had recently left school because her family could not afford to pay for school costs. Her parents arranged a marriage and Khushi married at age 13 and went to live with her in-laws.

When Human Rights Watch interviewed Khushi in late 2014, she was 16 years old. She and her husband and their 18-month-old son were now living with her parents because Khushi’s in-laws’ house and land had been destroyed by river erosion. Khushi had found marriage difficult. “I was very young so I didn’t have a lot of patience,” she said. “Sometimes I wouldn’t let my husband near me and we would fight. And I had all kinds of problems in my body when I was pregnant.”

More girls under the age of 15 get married in Bangladesh than in any other country in the world ― 29 percent. By age 18, 65 percent of Bangladeshi girls are married.

Poor girls in Bangladesh face a perfect storm: lack of access to education, poverty and social pressures, all of which drive child marriage. Poor families often can’t afford the costs of education ― which include exam fees, stationary and other expenses, even in primary school where tuition fees are waived ― and see girls as ready for marriage once they’ve left school. Dowry traditions encourage child marriage by setting lower dowry for younger brides, while natural disasters push families further into poverty. Many girls face sexual harassment in their communities and even threats of kidnapping; parents, finding no help from police, see marriage as a way to protect girls.

Several different girls, in different parts of the country used the exact same words to describe to Human Rights Watch how child marriage had affected them. “My life is destroyed,” they said.

Tragically, research supports that view. Girls who marry early are unlikely to stay in school. Girls face serious health risks ― including death ― as a result of early pregnancy, risks which also affect their children. They are more likely to suffer domestic violence. Some of the most heartbreaking stories in a new Human Rights Watch report about child marriage in Bangladesh are of girls abandoned by their husbands who begged to be taken back even after suffering horrific abuse, simply because they had nowhere else to go.

The government of Bangladesh should do more to end child marriage. In addition to being the right thing to do, it’s also legally required, under international law. In 2014, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina pledged to end child marriage before the age of 15 by 2021. She promised to strengthen the law that already makes child marriage a crime, and to develop a national action plan on ending all child marriage under the age of 18, a goal she set for 2041.

In the months that followed, however, Sheikh Hasina’s government took a devastating step backwards, proposing to lower the age of marriage for girls from the current 18 to 16.

South Korea is an important donor to Bangladesh, and the South Korean government considers Bangladesh a priority partner country. In 2013, the Korean government gave about $48 million in aid to Bangladesh. This generosity made South Korea the ninth-largest bilateral donor to Bangladesh. It spends a large proportion of its aid funding to Bangladesh on education and health programs, often sending Korean professionals and experts to provide assistance.

The Korean government has an opportunity to help make Bangladesh’s pledge to end child marriage a reality. In a meeting with Human Rights Watch in June, the Korean International Cooperation Agency identified areas where it could increase programming interventions specifically targeted at preventing child marriage and assisting married girls. South Korea should go ahead with this effort and also focus on assisting girls at risk of child marriage and married girls, like Khushi, in the health and education programs it funds in Bangladesh.

Even more importantly, President Park Geun-hye and her government should take advantage of the strong relationship between the country and Bangladesh to press on a political level for Bangladesh to do more to end child marriage.

As every day goes by, more Bangladeshi girls are being lost to child marriage. South Korea can help ― and should.

Phil Robertson is deputy director of Asia of Human Rights Watch and Heather Barr is senior researcher on women’s rights