Married at 14: Zambia’s Child Brides | Woman with Gloria Steinem

[Laughter] worldwide more than 200 million women have been married off before the age of 15 they are cut off from their education and often become what amounts to domestic servants it's an ingrain practice that is keeping subsaharan Africa mired in generational poverty we traveled to Zambia to learn how the life of one young girl in a remote Village can shackle the future future of an entire [Music] nation we're in the Eastern Province where child marriage is the highest and we're meeting a girl who's marrying a 48-year-old so we're meeting her in the last days of preparation we're going to see how she's feeling and what's going through her head the practice of child marriage has been going on for centuries it's often a source of income for poor families who receive a DIY payment in exchange for their daughters but a recent economic downturn has thrust much of Zambia into poverty that means thousands more young girls are at risk of being married off under the age of 18 the practice is technically illegal but enforcement of the law is rare we've been going down this road for a very long time right now and it's very narrow very rough and it's in the middle of nowhere after 8 hours of driving from the capital city of laka we finally arrived in the p district where the inanga people have been marrying off young girls for [Music] Generations before any wedding can take place every bride has to complete a highly secretive ritual it's known as chinam W we're about to meet a young girl she has been spending the past 30 days in this Hut right behind me she's not allowed to speak and she's not allowed to get outside of this Hut and inside she's learning everything about how to be a wife and with my friend Sanga who's a journalist we are going to go in and she's going to help us to get to know about the girl and what happens in the [Music] Hut this is D her mother has accepted one cow from the groom in exchange for her daughter D is 14 years [Music] old the very first thing they teach a girl who is going to get married is how to respect your husband because men are so particular about respect it's very very important in this tradition that's why they would never ever allow a girl to enter marriage or to be taken to her husband before she passes through this process the women who conduct the ritual are known as the leny for [Music] so now you can go she show you where to hold and how to hold them that's how you hold a man like it or not I got a lesson of my own and then start doing the waist like that M uhhuh just there you lock your uhuh feels so weird this feels so weird she's yeah and how do you do they think how she's doing she's ready she's ready wi what were you doing here in the hut for the past 30 days so what what are you expecting your life going to be like what did they teach you [Music] [Music] what do you think about having a child or being [Music] pregnant what did you do before the 30 days [Music] did you like school when you get married will you continue with school how does that make you feel knowing that you you're not going back to school this kind of got me very emotional she's not very much taught about how to make herself happy she's just only taught about how to make her husband happy and how to please her husband sexually and that's the most important thing but in fact as a result of this marriage Dyas will face a whole array of much greater [Music] hazards I have just watched dles undergo an elaborate ritual ual before she can marry her new husband but it was hearing from D directly that affected me the most when I talked to dyus and she was telling me how she loves school so much and she liked reading it's heartbreaking to know that the school is 30C walk from where she [Music] is what happens in Zambia in seventh grade is that a lot of girls due to early marriage drop out to go get married and now in this instant in this class there are four girls to 12 boys would they rather stay in school or get married though all would rather remain in school than get [Music] married losing out on her education is one thing but Dess faces a more immediate threat statistically she will most likely become pregnant soon and teenage girls who are not physically mature are at much greater risk of complications during childbirth we're going down this road and it's taking us a long time and it's just pretty cut off from the main town and very very bumpy we made the 2 and 1 half hour drive to St Francis Mission the closest medical facility to D's Village to find out what she can expect if and when she goes into labor we're going to meet with a Doctor Who's going to tell us about patients and what do they have to go through to get here is she going to behave huh continue drinking continue Bing continue exercises okay so how worried would you be for she lives in a village off of P it's where there are no roads it's very bumpy and how worried would you be for her if she's well advised and well educated and listens to the advice she will be in the hospital before before she starts labor if she doesn't then she has a problem or she can have a problem because her pelvis is not fit yet for for delivery she will not be able to deliver in a normal way she needs the cesarian section if she is 40 minutes away from uh from P then she can have a problem because she has to go to that hospital what do you think is the most important thing the country needs right now Bo roads it's more important than building new hospitals the problem is getting there it has to do with the availability of obective care of how do I get to a hospital where I can safely deliver Dr Jansen took us to meet one of his patients a young woman from a small remote Village just like d she's also from a very far place about 6 seven hours by car and where is her baby her baby died what do you hope to happen after leaving here I m I wish you the best and healing after here seeing the patients here it seems like the only the lucky ones come to get to this hospital since it it takes so long and so much money getting to the hospital in time is not the only challenge dilas will face Zambia is in the midst of a devastating HIV AIDS epidemic and women are especially at risk it's not uncommon for married men here to have extramarital Affairs contract HIV and then then pass it on to their wives in fact dessa's family has already been affected by the epidemic her father died from complications caused by AIDS and now her mother has been diagnosed as well when did you get sick is it because you're sick that's why you married d off so early to are your kids sick are you worried that like some God forbid something would happen and what would happen to D do you worry about that many parents in this part of Zambia hope that marriage will protect their daughters from HIV AIDS by ensuring they have only one sexual partner but as D's mother has learned it's no guarantee and what she can't know is whether D's new husband will become more of a threat than a savior D's chinamwali ritual is coming to an end it's now the night before her wedding and the entire Village is [Music] celebrating the bride is still inside the hut she's not allowed to come outside and everybody from the village women and men are gathering they are singing it's just all these festivities and over on the other side they're cooking food chicken and bread and we're going to have this amazing Feast where everybody's gonna enjoy except the bride the bride will just have her food brought inside the hut for her I sat down with dessa's 48-year-old husband TB Isaac to find out why he's decided to marry a 14-year-old girl the first thing I learned was that he's already married to someone else in many of these small villages male polygamy is an accepted practice how long have you been married 25 years so why are you getting married again so tell me about D how did you meet her or how did you see her you know that it's illegal in Zambia to marry someone younger than 16 years old so why couldn't you just marry someone who is at least two years older than d that's D is now out of school do you think that you'll be able to let her go to [Music] school because of the high poverty levels in certain families you found that the girls maybe looked up to somebody else to feel in the space being able to buy them clothes and even simple things like cell phones and these children then fall out of school and find themselves you know marrying older men according to gender minister in condu it's this cycle of poverty and the lack of Education that allows child marriage to persist she believes that the best way to eradicate child marriage is by attacking it at the local level this problem is highest in the rural part of Zambia and the rural part of Zambia is governed by the traditional leaders traditional leaders are campaigning speaking to the people in their chiefdoms using different methods popular theater and so on to tell parents not to marry off their [Applause] children to minister louu and others in this fight it's very clear why child marriage should be wiped out we are the people who make Nations so the healthier we are as women who have healthier children and uh will reduce child mortality and also reduce maternal mortality so it's it's in our interest in whatever way you look at it that child marriage must come to an [Music] end there is one group of women who have taken matters into their own hands working at the Village level to educate men and women alike we know we just got to moo and we're getting an amazing amazing welcoming from these beautiful women they're saying we are moving forward we're never going back and this is for women for change going [Applause] forward for women for change for wom for change the maso M are collective of women who bike around the country spreading a message of female empowerment in an effort to end child marriage women for change women for change we're going around the village now and the women the misso women's are talking about gender-based violence and early marriage why why do you think it started here this program in the past there were a lot of such type of cases here and has it gone really down like do you feel different yes if I say today I beat my wife these people come and Ales me are you married yes I'm a friend of three I've have got one boy and two girls are they in school yes yes would you consider marrying them a married no no no you get these ladies on the bikes right fortunately these efforts are also gaining Traction in the upper reaches of government anunga WIA is Zambia's first female vice president and a strong voice against child marriage you have done in the past a lot of the effort to end child marriage why is that so important for you we consider child marriage as one of the developmental issues because we are losing out on the girl child 16,000 girls have dropped out of schools in Zambia in one year due to Childhood marriage we want girls to be Future Leaders in their country to prosper but if they drop out of school it means the end of their future if you manag to end child marriage in Zambia what would that mean for the country country it would mean prosperity for the country because you can imagine 16,000 young people contributing to the economic growth of their country to be involved uh in their careers and prosper in those careers definitely they make a huge contribution to the country's growth the mandate to end childhood marriage is an idea that came from we the zambians we have realized what this means to our country's development back in the Eastern Province it's time for 14-year-old Dess to consummate her marriage to her 48-year-old husband it's very dark and it's late at night and there's almost no ceremony she was just brought in by an alen gizy woman and she was told that this is her [Music] home and that's it since we met dialis she's given birth to a baby girl named a cleaner who is just as likely to be married off as her mother now that dials is a married woman with a child she is confined to a life strictly at home or in her Village though she would like to be she's not in a classroom she won't be contributing to the development of her country or reaping any of its benefits she dreams that someday she'll return to school but she knows that will be her husband's [Music] decision [Music] [Laughter]

Channel: VICE News

Views: 1,175,998

Keywords: VICE News, VICE News Tonight, VICE on HBO, news, vice video, VICE on SHOWTIME, vice news 2023, child marriage, human rights, underage, children, zamba, africa, tradition, child bridges, Child brides, Zambia, Child marriage, Gender inequality, Human rights, Adolescent girls, Poverty, Traditional practices, Education access, Cultural norms, Health consequences, Empowerment, Advocacy, Early pregnancy, Sexual exploitation, Social development, Government policies, NGO interventions

Id: dRiAnrfX3Io

Length: 21min 26sec (1286 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 06 2024