UK minister urges youths to change girls’ status

Junior British minister for international development Lynne Featherstone has asked Bangladeshi youths to campaign for a change in the condition of girls.

“You young people are the change-makers,” she said on Monday at the first Girl Summit in Dhaka.

Featherstone, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, is visiting Dhaka to see for herself the steps being taken to end child marriage and prevent violence against women and girls.

Her visit follows the London Girl Summit in July in which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina vowed to end child and forced marriage.

Bangladesh has the highest child marriage rate in South Asia - 65 percent, the fourth highest in the world.

State Minister for women and children’s affairs Meher Afroze Chumki termed it “unfortunate” that despite progress in many areas, “we are lagging behind in preventing child marriage”.

She said the government would make the existing law stricter, but acknowledged that things would not change overnight.

“It is not possible to prevent (child marriage) entirely by enforcing the law. We have to generate greater awareness. Parents must be aware of the consequences.”

Girls who marry early are more likely to experience domestic and sexual violence, and complications or death during childbirth.

Activists mostly blame social insecurity and dowry for the high rate of child marriage in Bangladesh.

Prime Minister Hasina pledged at the Girl Summit in London that Bangladesh would end marriage under the age of 15 by 2021 and under 18 by 2041.

The British minister said child and forced marriages and domestic violence were not Bangladesh’s problems alone.

“It’s a universal problem,” she said, “we have in the UK domestic violence.”

She said the UK sent a clear and strong message that forced marriage was “totally unacceptable, illegal and will not be tolerated in the UK”.

The Dhaka Girl Summit, organised by the BRAC and supported by the Bangladesh and the UK governments, drew nearly 1,000 participants, many of them young girls.

Girls who survived a forced marriage or child marriage shared their experience.

One identified herself as ‘Rasheda’ said she was forced to sign a paper by a man in her neighbourhood.

“And it became her marriage certificate,” she said. She managed get out of the trap with the help of local journalists and the police administration.

A ninth-grader, Rasheda now dreams of becoming a police officer.

The visiting junior minister said young people are “a powerful force for change”.

“Half of the world’s population is under 25. As the next generation of leaders, they can create a positive future for girls and women and a better world for families and nations,” Featherstone said.

She was amazed to see a huge crowd of young people at the summit venue, Osmani Memorial Hall, and asked them to “start a campaign”.

“Start conversations in your communities, speak to your friends, families and schools. Together, let’s get hundreds, thousands, millions more voices demanding change for girls,” she said.

She, however, said girls themselves must be “at the centre of this action”.

“They are the ones whose rights, whose bodies and whose lives are at stake.

“And I have to say girls and women can’t do it on their own,” she said asking men and boys to play a great role to make a better world for their “sisters, wives and daughters”.

“Everyone can help to create this change for future generations. We must all play our part to alter girls’ social expectations, to see them as valuable members of society, sources for hope for the future, and investments worth making,” she said.

“The future isn’t fixed. Together, if we raise our voices loud enough, we can build a better world for girls, and therefore a better world for everyone”.

BRAC Founder Fazle Hasan Abed has chaired the summit.