Sierra Leone Girl Champion participate in Campaign to end child early forced marriage in Spain

 From 6 to12 October 2019, Save the Children Sierra Leone participated in a media campaign calling attention to child early forced marriage in commemoration of International Day of the Girl Child in Madrid, Spain.

 The “I don’t want to!” media campaign led by Amnesty International, Entreculturas, Mundo Cooperante and Save the Children aimed to call the Spanish state and public attention to the violation of rights that 12 million girls worldwide face through the practice of child early force marriage by using the experiences of two girl champions from Sierra Leone and Pakistan to shine the spotlight on this issue.  

 On International Day of the Girl Child girl activists, Kadiatu Massaquoi from Sierra Leone and Hadiqa Bashir from Pakistan shared their personal stories on child marriage and why they have decided to become advocates.

 At 17 years of age, married and a mother of two children, Kadiatu recalls why she decided to speak out against child marriage.

 "I lost my father and had to leave school when I was 14. The next year I was forced to marry after I got pregnant. It didn't fit into my plans. I was upset. I felt really bad. I wanted to stay in school to have a better future. I had no choice. I couldn't say 'I don't want to'. In my community it was the right thing to do. My mother told me I had to do it to stay in the community."

 Kadiatu is supported by the Right to Be a Girl project implemented in Pujehun district South of Sierra Leone. It aims to address child early forced marriage by providing affected girls and adolescents support systems like counselling and information on life skills. The project also aims to rebuild their lives by helping them return to school or take on vocational skills training for economic empowerment.

 For Hadiqa Bashir, who is also 17 years old from the Swat valley in Pakistan she was lucky not to be married off her parents at the age of  11 years, thanks to the intervention of her uncle a human rights activist who supported her to say “I don’t want to” to  marrying a 35 year old taxi driver. She took on the fight against this tradition after remembering one of her friends from school.

 "When I was seven, a friend my age celebrated her wedding. First, we just saw that there was a big party. But then she stopped going to school. We went to get her and her mother-in-law told us she wouldn't come back because she was a married woman. We had a party for her at school and she was self-conscious, scared, she wasn't playing with us anymore. She confessed to us that her husband had hit her with an iron rope."

 With these very different experiences both girls urged the Spanish government and donors to invest more in addressing child early forced marriage and called on NGOs to continue implementing protection programmes in countries and communities where this practice is prominent. They also called for public attention and support in the fight for the sake of girls who do not have the opportunity or the power like them to speak out, who cannot say “I don’t want to” to someone they do not want to marry, to mistreatment and to sexual violence.

 A short video of two girl champions sharing their experiences of early forced marriage and actions they are taking to end this terrible practice. One girl is from Sierra Leone, SCI's Right be a Girl Project, the other is an activist from Pakistan who started her own NGO to fight child marriage. It is an extract from their visit in Spain for celebration of International Day of the Girl Child.

Kindly click the link below..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=83&v=F9F51Bqwod8