By
Margaret Owen, a London-based lawyer with a special interest
in women and development. She is author of a book on widows, "A
World of Widows" (Zed Books, London)
LONDON:
Some child widows do not even know what a husband is when they are
told they have become a widow.
Pannabua, an Indian Hindu woman now in her 60s, recalls how her
mother called her in and said she could no longer play outside with
the other children - nor wear bangles, flowers or coloured saris
- because "your husband is dead." "Who
is a husband, mother?", she asked. She had never seen him, because,
as a young girl in an arranged marriage, she would not live with
her husband until she reached puberty. Yet from the day of his death,
when she was six years old, her life became wretched. She had to
conform to the traditional customs of Hindu widowhood, such as having
her head shaved, giving up wearing jewellery, and living the life
of an ascetic.
Her next 60 years were spent confined indoors as an unpaid servant
to her sister-in-law. Born into a caste (one of many Hindu hereditary
classes) that prohibited remarriage, her fate was sealed.
Her
fate is shared with many in traditional cultures where girls are
often married when very young and some will become child or teenage
widows.
In Bangladesh, Mali, Niger and Yemen, more than half the young women
interviewed for a 1995 survey by the United Nations Children's Fund
(UNICEF) were married before they were 16.
These figures do not reveal how many were destined to become widows
at an early age. But they do give some indication of the number
at risk of early widowhood because their husbands are old, or will
die in war, through accident or disease. In
some African countries, the male belief that the virus that causes
AIDS can be eliminated through sexual relations with a young girl
has led to an increase in child marriages, and therefore child widowhood.
These young widows may themselves be infected with the virus, and
be ostracised and abandoned by their husbands' family and the community.
Most
countries have adopted laws prohibiting marriage below a certain
age without parental consent. But despite the modern legislation,
child marriages continue to occur, since they are almost always
arranged by the parents - that is, with their consent - under customary
law.
Some of the serious consequences for the little girls involved in
such arrangements are well known. They include premature sexual
relations and pregnancies leading to miscarriages, stillbirths and
maternal mortality; withdrawal from education and training; and
the loss of childhood.
But few commentators mention widowhood.
The widely-held association between ageing and widowhood is perhaps
one of the reasons so little attention has been paid to the plight
of child widows, though child marriage has always been of concern
to those working to raise women's status.
Another reason for the neglect of girls as a category of widows
is that children have no voice. The combination of childhood and
widowhood compounds their invisibility, and the accounts of the
experience come from older women speaking many years later of what
befell them.
Negative attitudes to widowhood in many cultures make a child widow's
second marriage - where remarriage is permitted - especially problematic.
Her low status often limits the options to men who are "defective"
through age, infirmity or temperament.
Shamila, a Bangladeshi girl widowed for the second time at just
17, was first married to a sickly cousin when she was 11. After
his death, she was married off to an elderly man who had been threatening
to take the family's land if they did not pay a debt. When he died,
his children evicted Shamila.
Another young Bangladeshi, married at 12, was a widow with two children
by the age of 17. Although under Muslim law she was entitled to
a portion of her husband's property, his family threw her out of
the house and refused her any inheritance. Unaware that she had
any legal rights, she was reduced to begging and prostitution for
survival.
Children of widows, especially daughters, frequently suffer severe
disadvantages and discrimination, reflecting the low status of their
mothers. Widowed mothers often must withdraw their children from
school, and daughters are the first to be made to forgo education.
A Malawi
widow said she took her daughter out of school because "I fear she
will be raped now they see she has no father to protect her."
Nancy
is the 15-year-old daughter of Wainigi, a Kenyan widow with AIDS.
Wainigi had to flee her village after the death of her husband from
the disease, because she refused to cohabit with his brother.
She
was too weak to work, but a man in a shanty town outside Nairobi
offered Nancy domestic work. In fact, he set her up as a sex-worker.
Selling her body by day, Nancy was able to buy food and medicine,
and be with her mother at night.
When her mother died, the social worker could not find her until
much later that day because she was in a brothel.v There are linkages
between widowhood and many issues affecting children - such as exploitative
child labour, debt bondage, prostitution and street children - which
have never been sufficiently researched.
A new international organisation, Empowering Widows in Development
(EWD), has been established with the aim of raising awareness and
understanding of the problems confronting widows in developing countries,
including child widows and the children of widows.
The London-based organisation is a clearing house for information
on widows' issues, and advocates to get widows' rights on the international
agenda. It recognises that widows and their dependents are among
the poorest people on earth, and that they suffer some of the worst
discrimination.
We are beginning to learn more, as widows work together, form groups
and articulate their demands. But the children have no voice and
so extra efforts must be made to protect them. The UN Convention
on the Rights of the Child provides scope for action./ CHILD
NEWSLINE
