Child marriage – Ethiopia

Tume Mida is 10 years old; her husband, Dida Malicha, is 22.

Tume was born in a village 100 kilometers away from her husband’s home, where she now lives. Despite the distance, their families knew each other because of an earlier marriage. When it was time for Dida to marry, he and his father came to Tume’s family and proposed to one of Tume’s sisters, who was 25.

Both families agreed to the wedding, part of the bride price (through coffee and tobacco) was paid and the date of the ceremony was set. But, when Dida and his father returned to the village some time later they were shocked to discover the bride had married somebody else. Dida’s family was very angry, but agreed to discuss with Tume’s family to find a solution. It turned out Tume was the solution.

10-year-old Tume was offered as a replacement bride. Nothing prevented Dida and his family from looking for another family, but because they already had an agreement with Tume’s family, and had paid part of the bride price, they decided not to look elsewhere.

Dida explained his feelings about Tume’s older sister. “When she refused, I was so angry, I cried a lot. I thought I would not marry at all.” He had no desire to marry the young girl, and started to look for another bride to avoid doing so. But finally, his family calmed him down and convinced him to marry Tume. He resigned himself to marrying her. “My father asked me whether I wanted this girl or if I preferred to ask another from a different family. But it is our culture: if you first propose to a girl of one family, you have to accept to marry another girl from the same family in case it does not work with the first one.”

Dida’s father said that Tume’s reaction to the marriage has been good: “She knows properly why she came to this family and she is happy with it. She is active, she knows everything and is acting as if she were the housewife.”

Asking Tume if she missed her family, she answered “I don’t think about my family. My family is here, not there.”

CARE’s Healthy Unions project works with communities to reduce harmful practices such as early marriage, abduction and female genital mutilation (FGM).  CARE has worked with Dida’s family to encourage them to protect Tume from having sex until she is much older.

More about child marriage:

Child marriage is a gross human rights violation that puts young girls at risk and keeps them mired in poverty. Besides being it a serious human rights violation, child marriage is also a severe health issue: many married adolescents are pulled out of school at an early age, meaning being less familiar with basic reproductive health issues, including the risk to HIV.

• More than 60 million girls under the age of 18 are married, many to men twice their age or older.
• An estimated 100 million girls in developing countries will be married within the next decade. That's 25,000 new child brides every single day for the next 10 years.
• About 14 million adolescent girls become mothers every year. More than 90% of these very young mothers live in developing countries.
• Girls between the ages 10 and 14 are five times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth than women ages 20 to 23.

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