Working up here in northwest Ethiopia this week with a group called ICRW – International Center for Research on Women. They are working with CARE Ethiopia on a project called TESFA, which means “Hope” in Amharic. Through TESFA, both agencies are working to educate 5,000 adolescent girls on issues relating to economic empowerment and sexual and reproductive health, much needed in a country where the average girl gets married at age 15, and bears her first child at age 18. My week is all photos, as ICRW has a writer here, and we’re spending each day interviewing and photographing child brides – girls promised for husbands when they were as young as two years old.
I’ve never really covered any child marriage projects before, so much of what we’re seeing is new to me. It’s not as black and white an issue as it might sound, difficult as it is for many in a Western culture to imagine marrying off your daughter just a few years after she is born. But poverty, and cultural norms, underlie it all. In Ethiopia, the legal age for marriage is 18, but many in the remote rural areas we’ve been visiting this week literally don’t know how old they or their own children are, so legalities mean little. Many we spoke with this week though said the same thing – that the education the TESFA project brings is a huge step towards changing some of the cultural and gender issues that have made child marriages accepted for so long here. Interesting work. Long days in the field, at fairly high altitude under clear skies. I’ll be taking a sunburn back home with me to a wintry Maryland this weekend.
January 21st, 2012 | by David in Travel
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