Stages of Development: Marriage of Girls and Teens as an International Human Rights Issue
| Date | 01 March 2005 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663905049524 |
| Author | Annie Bunting |
| Published date | 01 March 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT:
MARRIAGE OF GIRLS AND
TEENS AS AN INTERNATIONAL
HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE
ANNIE BUNTING
York University, Canada
ABSTRACT
The case of ‘child marriage’ has not been extensively studied in international women’s
rights and children’s rights scholarship. This article attempts to contribute to a
discussion about cultural diversity and human rights through the case of early
marriage. I argue that a strategy based on a uniform marriageable age and a narrow
rights-based analysis misses the complexity of both marriage and age. I maintain that
the socio-economic conditions in which girls, adolescents and young women live and
marry need to be examined and addressed in order to develop relevant and culturally
appropriate international strategies. Further, I discuss the cultural specificity of child-
hood and adolescence in contrast to the international human rights perspective that
considers all people under the age of 18 as children.
KEY WORDS
adolescence; childhood; culture; international women’s rights; marriage
INTRODUCTION
MARRIAGE OF girls and adolescents is common in many parts of the
world.1Activists and media commonly refer to the practice as child
marriage or early marriage and to the spouses as child brides,
married girls, schoolgirl brides or babies having babies. In this article, I will
put early marriage into global and comparative context. Indeed, the preva-
lence of early marriage and its consequences in England or Wales are
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, www.sagepublications.com
0964 6639, Vol. 14(1), 17–38
DOI: 10.1177/0964663905049524
markedly different than in Chad or Nigeria. These differences are instructive
for our understanding of the role of international human rights standards in
addressing early marriage.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the treaty-monitoring
committee for the Women’s Convention (CEDAW) advocate a rights-based
approach where early marriage is seen as a human rights violation in itself.
Rather than focusing on the consequences for girls’ health and education,
UNICEF (2001) argues that early marriage needs to be examined as a human
rights violation. In contrast to such an approach, I will argue that a strategy
based on a uniform marriageable age as suggested by CEDAW (1994) and a
narrow rights-based analysis miss the complexity of both marriage and age.
I maintain that the socio-economic conditions in which girls, adolescents and
young women live and marry need to be examined and addressed in order
to develop relevant and culturally appropriate international strategies. In
particular, countries with very low levels of socio-economic development
have very high incidence of early marriage – early average or median age at
first marriage.
In this article, I will argue that the cultural constructions of childhood need
to be considered in analyzing early marriage. Experiences and discourses of
childhood, adolescence, and marriage cannot be assumed to be uniform across
cultures, place and time (Bridgeman and Monk, 2000: 3; Macleod, 2003: 420).
The consequences of early marriage and early pregnancy differ from place to
place and these consequences are instructive for our understanding of the role
of international women’s rights standards in addressing early marriage and
its effects. Holistic human rights approaches would include cultural, social
and economic dimensions of early marriage, a deep contextualization of rights
(Bunting, 1999: 11). A strategy based on a uniform marriageable age of 18
years, on the other hand, obfuscates the diversity of childhoods.
As Allison James (1998) writes:
the ‘problem’ of children’s physical and psychological welfare in developing
contexts cannot simply be solved by ‘simplistic solutions, such as banning all
child labour’ and placing these children, like their Western counterparts, in a
position of social, economic and physical dependency. In ignoring the socially
constructed character of childhood, through promulgating a culturally specific
version, such an approach can have potentially devastating consequences for
children. (p. 58)
James cites data on the number of children who are heads of households to
argue that banning child labour would only deepen children’s poverty, not
alleviate it. Similarly, to ‘ban early marriage’ risks exacerbating, not alleviat-
ing, the underlying socio-economic problems facing girls and adolescents in
developing countries.
This article is based on the available data from international sources such
as United Nations bodies and non-governmental organizations. Also, I will
highlight the case of early marriage in northern Nigeria, which I have studied
for the past ten years. I conducted interviews about age at first marriage in
18 SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 14(1)
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