“To Protect Her Honour”: Child Marriage in Emergencies – The Fatal Confusion between Protecting Girls and Sexual Violence

Author: CARE
Publication Date: May 2015

Description: This report discusses increasing child marriage rates among female Syrian refugees and asserts that child marriage is a form of gender-based violence (GBV) rooted in—and contributing to—gender inequality and domestic abuse. The report discovers that while many parents marry off their underage daughters based on the belief that marriage will protect them from rape and offer them a way out of poverty, it actually leaves the girls extremely vulnerable to mistreatment and GBV.  Because child marriage is illegal, the unions are typically unregistered and the brides therefore have little possibility for legal redress or access to social services if abuse or abandonment should occur.  Child marriage is also found to be a gateway to other forms of GBV, including 1) denying girls an education, 2) forcing girls who are raped to marry their rapists in order to defend their honor, 3) putting girls at risk for intimate partner violence, and 4) denying girls the right to reproductive choices and health care.  

To access the resource, please click here “To Protect Her Honour”: Child Marriage in Emergencies – The Fatal Confusion between Protecting Girls and Sexual Violence.