Africa's child brides: forced by tradition to marry when they're as young as 10 or 11, girls in rural sub-Saharan Africa pay a lasting price.

• Author: LaFraniere, Sharon
• Position: INTERNATIONAL

BACKGROUND

"Africa's Child Brides" focuses on Malawi. But the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) says child marriages are also widespread in South Asia. And recent reports from Iraq say they are on the rise there. Cultural traditions that relegate girls and women to subservient rotes make the practice hard to stop.

CRITICAL THINKING

* This article offers students the opportunity to learn about the power of culture.

* The writer notes that outlawing child marriages will be hard because many marriages take place under custom, not civil taw. What does this say about the power of culture in Malawi?

* Note also, on page 25, that Mwaka's father, after he took her back, said: "I didn't know I was abusing her."

* Discuss why a father might not see this practice as abuse. Is it because of the culture in which he was raised?

DEBATE

* Which of the following statements would students support?

* The U.N. and Western nations should threaten countries Like Malawi with economic sanctions unless they act to stop the child-bride custom.

* The developed world cannot go everywhere to solve social and economic problems like the child-bride custom.

DISCUSSION QUESTION

* Which do you think would be a better way to stop the child-bride custom-tough laws punishing parents or some type of economic inducement to reduce parents' financial incentives to marry off their daughters at such young ages?

WRITING PROMPTS

* Have students write a Letter for a group Like UNICEF in which they appeal to Americans to donate to a fund designed to free child brides.

* Students can design and write a poster to be displayed in Malawi villages that explains why child-bride marriages must stop.

FAST FACT

* UNICEF says pregnancy-related deaths are the Leading cause of death for girls between the ages of 15 and 19 worldwide.

WEB WATCH

www.unicef.org/newsline /01pr21.htm UNICEF study on child marriages around the world. Includes a Link to a more detailed report.

Mapendo Simbeye's difficulties began in early 2004 when his crops failed in the hills along Malawi's northern border with Tanzania. So to feed his wife and five children, he went to his neighbor, Anderson Kalabo, and asked for a loan. Kalabo gave him 2,000 kwacha, about $16. The family was fed.

But that created another problem: How could Simbeye, a penniless farmer, repay Kalabo? The answer would shock most outsiders, but in sub-Saharan Africa's rural patriarchies, it is deeply ingrained custom: Simbeye sent his 11-year-old...