Can WASH help to reduce the child marriage?

Md. Firoj Alam
WASH Officer, UNICEF Bangladesh

There are 33.9 million adolescents, representing 30% of the total Bangladesh population[1]. It is a big challenge for the country to ensure adolescent development and build them as agent of change to contribute for the country. Sex and gender differences emerge most sharply with the onset of puberty, affecting the life trajectories of girls and boys in profoundly different ways. History shows that, adolescent girls and young women have less opportunity and fewer resources than young men: less food, schooling and medical attention, less access to paid employment and less free time, along with a strong possibility to be married off before the age of eighteen. When puberty signals their potential for motherhood, girls may have to drop out of schools to marry and begin childbearing (USAID Youth Policy, 2012).

In Bangladesh, 62.8% of women age 20-49 yrs. married before the age of 18 while 61.45% in Dhaka division and 81.9 % in Jamalpur. A UNICEF study, “The State of the World’s Children 2011: Adolescents – An age of Opportunity (February, 2011)” indicates that in adolescence, the generally-defined transition period between puberty and legal adulthood (ages 10-19), female school drop-out rates are strongly related to not allowing girls leave their home unaccompanied, being subject to sexual harassment, physical and psychological violence (e.g. stalking) and child marriage. In this patriarchal society, gender inequality is prevalent, disparity in rights and responsibilities between boys and girls are enormous.[2] The dropout rate for girls in secondary level is much higher than that of boys which 16% and 10% respectively. Furthermore, adolescents with disabilities are often subject to greater inequalities and less access to services than their peers without disabilities; and for adolescent girls with disabilities this discrimination is often exacerbated and the risks of sexual abuse heightened.

According to the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), 100 million girls will be married before the age of 18 in the coming decade. Most will be in sub-Saharan Africa and the Asian Subcontinent (Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh). In Niger, for example, 77% of women in their early 20s were married as children. In Bangladesh, it is 65%. Child marriage also occurs in parts of the Middle East, including Yemen and the rural Maghreb.

Globally, according to UNICEF, 36% of women aged 20-24 were married or in a union, forced or consensual, before they'd reached 18. An estimated 14 million girls between the ages of 15 and 19 give birth each year. They are twice as likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth as women in their 20s. Girls who marry between the ages of 10 and 14 are five times as likely to die during pregnancy6 or childbirth as women in their early 20s.

The effect of the child marriage is enormous. I assume most of us are aware of it.  What is still unclear is all of the causes that fosters the child marriage in Bangladesh. There are some prominent causes recognized by all like poverty, lack of education, dowry, religious inspiration, social insecurities etc. Again, there are some causes which are really existing but not recognized in Bangladesh as a cause.  

The psycho-physical aspects like biological need, emotional aspects etc. falls in this category. There are, also some causes which is neither recognized, nor unrecognized but influences the issue silently. WASH is such an issue that has a great impact on the child marriage in Bangladesh. Let me elaborate the issue here under.

In Bangladesh, the rate of child marriage is higher among the poorest section of the population. Insecurity is the cause of all causes here. Insecurities appear to the poor people in many form. First they are worried about the basic physical need like food, shelter, cloth treatment etc. Secondly, they are similarly concerned about their dignity and respect in the society. When, they are the parents of a girl-child their feeling of insecurity increases in many folds. On the one hand there is a very less scope for income generation for women in the country, on the other there is a fear to be abused everywhere. The fear of abusing is very high and sensitive for the girls. And, the lack of WASH facilities open another window of fear. Let me shade on this point.

Due to the lack of toilets and bathing facilities women choose to go out for defecation and bathing at night and often faces the rape, abuse and sexual harassment. So far I know, no research has been conducted to know exactly how many women and adolescent girls are sexually abused when they go to respond the natural call or go outside of the house for having a bath. The anecdotal evidences and reports of the newspapers give an indication that the number is huge.

Recently a report from India published in a Bangla newspaper has caught sight of my eyes. The report says that 32% women in West Bengal are abused sexually when they go out for defecation. Culturally and geographically West Bangal and Bangladesh are not staying far. I assume, the similar situation is prevailing in Bangladesh.

May be, the results are manifesting in different shape: a huge incidents of child marriage in Bangladesh.

The incidents sexual harassments, abuse and rape are really perilous when it happens to the girl child of any ages. On the one hand it traumatizes the parents and the victim, on the other hand the fear of losing social status grippes the both. The social and religious psychology of the people of Bangladesh are to keep a girl protected from the touch of others, at least up to the time of marriage.

The WASH interventions can directly and indirectly contribute to prevent the child marriage.  As I mentioned earlier, dignity to life, privacy and security are some of the prominent causes for child marriage. And, WASH can play a good role to eliminate these causes.

WASH Interventions should have to be taken in two levels, i,e, in community  and schools. In community, priority should be given to the families who are hardcore poor and having girls. For the school level interventions the secondary schools should be targeted. Compared to the primary schools, the WASH situation is worst in the secondary schools.  As the students in the secondary school belong to the age group 11-16, they need menstrual hygiene management facilities in the schools/toilets. It is evident that the better coverage of WASH facilities in the schools reduces the drop-out rate. It is also a fact that the girls who continue their education have the less likelihood to get married early.

Incidents of rape and abuse often occur when the girls go out for defecation and bathing. It creates a feeling of insecurity among the parents of the girl child in Bangladesh (anecdotal information). This fear of insecurity compels parents; especially the poor parents to give marry their girl child as soon as possible. The lack of toilets adjacent to the house and distanced bathing place (pond/canal/ tube well) hinder the privacy of the girls. It also affects their dignity to life and parents seek a solution of that in a marriage. The arrangement of bathing space, toilet facilities and water supply adjacent/attached to the house of the families, therefore will have direct impact in reducing the child marriage.

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[1] www.unfpa-bangladesh.org/php/thematic.youth.php

 

Water and Waste Mangement

Md. Firoj Alam
17 March 2015

“Water and Sustainable Development” is the theme of the World Water Day 2015.  The theme of this years no doubt is very relevant and significant as the SDG (Sustainable Development Goal) is going to be finalized at the end of the MDG (Millennium Development Goal) this year.

There are many products and by-products of development. Waste is one of the obvious by products of it. Without creating waste, it is very difficult to make the development happening and continuing. In the plain word we can say, “The more you get developed, the more you produce waste”. Many countries, especially the countries which are doing rapid economic growth are already in trouble to deal the waste created in their development process. The developed countries has chosen to incinerate waste to get rid of it but it pollutes air. They are actually internationalizing their own /local problem, while the developing countries are using the waste mostly for landfilling and pollutes their land, air and water at a time. In this article I would like to shade a bit of light on the water pollution, particularly the ground water pollution caused mostly by our improper waste management.

Water is one of our most important natural resources which we have a plenty in quantity though it is poor in quality. This is why we are living with abundance and scarcity of water at the same time. We are spoiling our water knowingly and unknowingly every day. Neither ground water, nor the surface water is spared from the contamination. The pollution of surface water is very much visible to us and we often discuss about it. Contrarily, the ground water on which we are depending fully for our daily consumption is getting contaminated every day and it is remaining unnoticed to us generally.

One of the unnoticed contaminants of our ground water is the municipality waste. Let me elaborate this area a bit. In Bangladesh there is no well managed waste disposal system, let alone a complete waste management for the towns. So far what the municipal authorities are doing is just dumping the waste in an open place close to the towns which is often situated very close to the localities. In professional language it is called “non-sanitary landfill”. Examples are many of this in and around Dhaka city, divisional and district towns.

The wastes in our country are mostly green waste: bio degradable waste. However the share of hazardous and non-bio degradable waste is also huge. As the numbers of population is very high and the concentration of population is highest in our country in the world we produce a huge amount of waste daily though the per capita waste is very low here compare to the developed countries. The waste in the dumping sites produces a lot of methane that contributes to the global warming.  Global warming potentials (GWP) of methane gas is 21 times higher than the carbon-di-oxide which contributes 12% of our total greenhouse gas emission. I am leaving the methane emission issue here as it is not an issue of my today’s discussion. Let’s come back to the ground water pollution.

The non-sanitary landfill is very dangerous because other than producing methane it produces a huge amount of liquid called leachate. Leachate is just a soup of bacteria, chemical elements and particles of heavy metals. This leachate percolates down to the ground water quickly and travels far through the aquifer and contaminates our safe water which we are extracting through the tube-wells and using for drinking and cooking. In Bangladesh we sometimes test the arsenic in the ground water and we seldom look into the other chemical and biological parameters. There is every possibility of having heavy presence of chemical and biological pollutants in the ground water where the dumping sites are!

Bangladesh is called a graveyard of tube-wells. After identification of arsenic in the ground water many tube-wells were abandoned immediately by the users. The pumps of the tube-wells have been taken away and left the well redundant. These wells are just uncapped, open I would say rather. The opened tube-wells have the every possibility to contaminate our precious ground water as contaminant can easily pass to the ground through the boreholes. Many of the boreholes are located inside the industrial premises with a high likelihood of contaminating the ground water with chemical and bio-logical effluents of the industries.

We the users are just unaware about the risk of contamination that may occur through the redundant tube-wells. We simply leave the non-functioning tube-wells uncapped and allow the pollutants to reach up to the ground water. As per an estimation, there are about 10 million tube-wells in Bangladesh. The number of the redundant tube-wells is very high, we can assume from this data.

Neither in the urban area nor in the rural area we have appropriate faecal sludge management system. The sewerage lines of the municipalities in most cases are opened onto the rivers or waterbodies while the open toilets are contaminating surface water years after years.  In last three decades we have achieved a good coverage in terms of use of improved latrines. Different sources show that about 80% of our population is now using latrine.  Bangladesh has done a better progress than many countries in the world in this regard. We are proud of it. However, most of these latrines are just a pit latrine in type. It is constructed by the people using very basic technology.  It is true that it can confine the faecal matter in a fixed place and can prevent the pathogens to come out in the open environment but it has also created a high risk of contaminating the ground water especially in those areas where water table is high. I know for sure from a study done in an island of Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh that pathogens escaping from the toilets pit had contaminated total source of ground water there. Now it is really a time to teach the people how to seal the toilet pits to protect the ground water from the pathogens of the faeces.

Our ground water is already in a severe stress as the natural pollutant like arsenic, salinity and iron are found in many areas. The over extraction of ground water is causing the depletion of aquifer in the rural and urban areas including Dhaka city. Our surface water is already so contaminated that it is almost irrecoverable through treatment. If we go on contaminating our water in such a pace, we will have to import safe water from India, Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar in future to meet our daily demand. I am sure, none of us are ready for that!

Md. Firoj Alam is a Water Sanitation and Hygiene Officer of a UN agency in Bangladesh.