Child Marriage in the Muslim World: Difference between revisions

Child Marriage in the Muslim World (view source)

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 '''Nigeria'''
-{{Quote||One Islamic land where child marriage is common -- in fact, more common than anywhere else in the world -- is northern Nigeria, where Sharia is in force. The Nigerian government has tried to act against the practice, passing a law in 2003, the Child Rights Act, that set the minimum age for marriage at eighteen. Islamic clerics have been the fiercest opponents of this law.<BR>. . .<BR>
+{{Quote||Northern Nigeria has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world: nearly half of all girls here are married by the age of 15.
-Nigeria is made up of 36 states, of which 18 have passed the Child Rights Act; however, '''only one majority-Muslim Nigerian state has passed the law, and that with a change that set "puberty," rather than the age of eighteen, as the minimum requirement for lawful marriage. The result? As many as 800,000 Nigerian women are afflicted with fistula, a disease resulting from early intercourse and pregnancy'''.<ref name="AINA">[{{Reference archive|1=http://www.aina.org/news/20090918145141.htm|2=2011-10-25}} Child Marriage in the Islamic World] - AINA, September 18, 2009</ref>}}
+The consequences have been devastating. Nigeria has the highest maternal mortality rate in Africa and one of the world’s highest rates of fistula, a condition that can occur when the pressure of childbirth tears a hole between the vagina and the bladder or rectum. Many women are left incontinent for life. Up to 800,000 women suffer from fistula in Nigeria.<BR>. . .<BR>
+Dr Waaldijk operates on up to 600 women a year, with no electricity or running water... Some have been divorced by their husbands - it is estimated that up to half of adolescent girls in northern Nigeria are divorced... The Nigerian federal Government has attempted to outlaw child marriage. In 2003 it passed the Child Rights Act, prohibiting marriage under the age of 18. In the Muslim northern states, though, there has been fierce resistance to the Act, with many people portraying it as antiIslamic.<BR>. . .<BR>
+Half of Nigeria’s 36 states have passed the Act, but it has been adopted by only one of the dozen Muslim states - and even that one made a crucial amendment substituting the age of 18 for the term “puberty”.
+Each state in Nigeria has the constitutional right to amend legislation to comply with its local traditions and religion, meaning that central government is powerless to impose a minimum age of marriage.<ref name="TONOV282008"></ref>}}
 '''Palestinian Authority area'''