Underage wives transmit health problems to children: female activist in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor
DEIR EZ-ZOR, Syria (North Press) – Underage wives pass on social, economic and health problems they have faced, as well as the effects of violence and illiteracy to their children, said a female activist in the Deir ez-Zor countryside, eastern Syria, on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, the Women’s Committee in the Eastern Region in the eastern countryside of Deir ez-Zor organized a seminar on the effects of the underage marriage on the local community, whose traditions allow girls to be married off under the age of eighteen, despite the family problems they face and many cases of divorce.
“The social situation of the families adhere to customs and traditions, along with poverty and illiteracy, are the most prominent causes of underage marriages that have resulted in problems,” Ghada Adel, an official in charge of the Women’s Committee in the Eastern Province, east Syria, told North Press.
She added that the girls who get married early, are more vulnerable to domestic violence and are less likely to stay at school, in addition to their suffering from more economic and health problems than their unmarried peers.
Adel described the case of an underage wife after childbearing as “a child girl who raises a child, and this is a crime in itself.”
She pointed out that the pressure is transmitted to their children in the middle of a poor area of adequate health and education services.
She believed that putting in place laws that specify the age of marriage and deterrent penalties for violators will limit the cases, in addition to the role of awareness seminars for the population, who have the responsibility to confront “the loss of the future of their daughters.”