underage marriage
street violence &
the civil war
Underage marriage of girls is prevalent in Chad and frequently leads to a form of domestic violence that includes child abuse. There is evidence that girls who marry early are at higher risk for intimate partner violence. The sociologist Erukular concludes, “In addition, some evidence suggests that women who marry early are at increased risk of intimate partner violence” (Erukular 48). These marriages are arranged, and it is not uncommon for the girls, in their early teens (and younger), to enter into marriage with a grown man (Erulkar 27). Forced marriage, such as exists in Chad, makes it easier to abuse the person who is unable to protect herself.
“The transition to marriage has a significant impact on the quality of a young woman's life, as it shifts her focus, while she is still young, from education and personal development to family life and motherhood” -Erulkar
withheld from independence
Girls who marry young do not go to school to get an education. They do not experience adolescence or ever know what it is like to be independent. The girls usually live far from their families once they marry and begin their own. This lack of family support confines girls to a zone without knowledge, freedom, and self-responsibility, or the means ever to attain them. Kept in a state of entrapment, in the condition of constant abuse, their isolation terminates processes of self-identification and self-development; these girls often end up unable to cope. They descend into mental states of depression, from which they rarely emerge.
"Without prior experience of taking care of themselves, being on their own, uneducated, and having never known anything other than the abusive situation they are settled, young married girls encounter desperation and hopelessness"
