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The difficult economic situation, school dropout and domestic violence are some of the main reasons for early marriages in Kosovo, which mostly affect girls from the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities, say the civil society in Kosovo.
Early marriage in Kosovo has been raised as a concern in the 2021 World Human Rights Report, published by the US Department of State on 12 April.
DASH cites a report by the Kosovo Agency of Statistics (KAS) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which states that 1 in 25 women and 1 in 50 men aged 20-24 were married before the age of 18 years old in Kosovo.
According to this report published in 2019-2020, the percentage is much higher among women and men of this age from the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities. In fact, 1 in 3 women and 1 in 10 men aged 20-24 in these communities were married before the age of 18.
Even in the DASH report, the cause for this situation is estimated to be poverty and lack of education.
Victims of violence as a result of early marriage
“I have been married for 14 years. We quarreled and talked. He kicked me out of the house at 6 o’clock in the morning. I told him I had nowhere to go. It hurt me a lot. He broke my teeth. “I was pregnant, it hit me in the chest, it left me breathless.”
This is a story of a Roma girl – now 18 years old – given to Radio Free Europe in November last year.
There are many other cases like this, said Gjyljeta Devolli, from the Organization for the Rights of Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian Women and Girls.
Devolli told Radio Free Europe that informing and raising the awareness of the families of these communities about early marriages is a key factor in preventing this phenomenon.
According to her, most family members force their daughters to marry claiming that they will find a better life, but in fact, as she added, in most cases the opposite happens.
“Those girls drop out of school, remain economically dependent for life, are subject to illegal marriages, have children when they are children themselves and have no knowledge of child rearing, then very often they are also victims of domestic violence and forms. “other abuses,” she said.
Muhamet Arifi, head of the Balkan Sunflowers organization, which deals with education and rights issues of the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities in Kosovo, agrees.
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According to a report made by his organization and published in December 2020, about 10 percent of women from the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities have been married under the age of 18 in the last five years.
Arifi told Radio Free Europe that one of the main reasons is unemployment.
The report includes 574 families in four municipalities, Fushë Kosovë, Obiliq, Graçanicë and Shtime.
Of all these families, according to the report, there have been 53 marriages under the age of 18 in the last five years. There are 43 pregnant women under the age of 18.
More than 50 percent of the population in these municipalities is under the age of 18.
“We have many students who have completed college and master and are unemployed. Others who are younger have seen that these have studied and have not been employed. “They get married, have children and get social and live that way,” he said.
The main problem, the education of children
The report of the Kosovo Agency of Statistics states that only 64 percent of children from the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities attend lower secondary school, while only 31 percent attend upper secondary school.
The Coalition of NGOs for the Protection of Children in Kosovo, KOMF, say that education is one of the main factors why early marriages occur. The children of these communities mainly attend classes in the Albanian language in Kosovo.
“Marriage before the age of 18, unfortunately, is a dark reality for many girls and this is a violation of children’s rights,” Bukureza Surdulli, a researcher at KOMF, told Radio Free Europe.
According to her, another cause is health, as Kosovo does not have an integrated system of social, educational and health services, which would help these communities to be educated about health.
This, according to her, can be done with home visits of girls from these communities.
“When these home visits are made, normally a social worker or a nurse could help with the education part, in order to educate the children how to behave, how to protect themselves from early pregnancy, because one of “Early pregnancies are also the cause of early marriages”, said Surdulli.
The problem of early marriages is intended to be regulated by the new draft Civil Code, prepared by the Ministry of Justice in Kosovo.
According to this Civil Code, which is still pending adoption, “no one can enter into marriage without reaching the age of 18, prohibiting the possibility of entering into early marriages under the age of 18”.
What is early marriage?
According to a 2019 report by the People’s Advocate Institution in Kosovo, early marriage or child marriage is considered a global problem.
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“Child marriage, also referred to as early marriage, is any marriage where at least one of the parties is under the age of 18. “Child marriage is considered to be a form of forced marriage,” the report said.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), meanwhile, estimates that as of March 2018, worldwide, some 21 percent of young women are married before the age of 18.
Also, according to UNICEF, the 650 million women and girls alive today are married before the age of 18.
Every year, 12 million girls worldwide get married before the age of 18 and it is expected that 150 million girls will get married before the age of 18, by 2030./ REL
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