by REEM ABBAS
A young Sudanese girl holding a baby near a USAID tent in the Al Salam internally displaced persons camp. The United Nations Children’s Fund estimates that 33 percent of Sudanese women aged 20 to 24 were married before the age of 18. CREDIT/Sven Torfinn/CC By 2.0
KHARTOUM, Jul 10 2013 (IPS) – Lawyers and rights activists are calling for a change in Sudan’s laws which allow for the marriage of girls as young as 10.
It is time, they say, that Sudan’s laws recognise gender equality so that the country’s girls and young women can take control of their lives and leave behind the cycle of child marriage and abuse.
“(Activists) are advocating a change in the personal status laws as they discriminate against women and aim to keep them in the household,” said Khadija Al-Dowahi, from the Sudanese Organisation for Research and Development (SORD), which conducts research on child marriage.
Sudan’s 1991 Personal Status Law of Muslims does not grant women equal rights. It also promotes child marriage. Article 40 of the personal status law sets no age limit for marriage and in fact states that a 10-year-old girl can be married “with the permission of a judge”.
“The personal status laws basically state that girls can get married when they are old enough to be able to comprehend matters … but you could easily say that girls understand matters at the age of 10,” Al-Dowahi told IPS.
In addition, Sudan has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
The U.N. Children’s Fund estimates that a third of Sudanese women now aged 20 to 24 were married before the age of 18. In rural areas, where the problem is more persistent, child marriage is as high as 39 percent as opposed to 22 percent in urban areas.
A visit to Khartoum Hospital shows clearly just how widespread the phenomenon of child marriage is in Sudan. Inside, there is an entire Obsetric Fistula ward – the patients there are mostly young mothers whose bodies are too underdeveloped to allow them to give birth, making them prone to developing fistula.
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