A video clip circulating on social media has exploded the issue of underage marriage and its clear spread in Egypt and the escalation of the phenomenon over the past several years. The clip showed the engagement ceremony of two 12-year-olds in Ain Shams, east of the capital, Cairo. Following the widespread circulation of the video, the security services announced the two children’s identification and arrested their families. It announced that the child groom is studying in the fourth grade of primary school, and the child bride is studying in the third grade. The engagement of the two children, Sama and Combo, sparked an uproar and controversy on social media in Egypt, especially since the incident is not the first of its kind.
Underage marriage
The Egyptian authorities are content to intensify the penalties for the marriage of minors under the age of 18 without looking at why it happens. From time to time, the case explodes due to a video clip or a shocking testimony from one of the victims, as the role of the National Council for Women and the National Council for Childhood is limited to submitting reports on cases that appear in public. Official figures show a significant increase in underage marriage rates, amid the inability of the concerned authorities to address the phenomenon, despite full knowledge of its causes.
In many Egyptian villages, underage marriage is widespread. Some villages in Qalyubia Governorate have become a destination for wealthy Gulf people who marry girls less than 15-years-old and pay large sums to their parents. The villages that wealthy people from the Gulf visit are known to officials yet police do not intervene except in the event of a dispute between the girl’s family and the rich man or the appearance of video clips that cause an uproar in the community.
In January last year, the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics announced that the rate of child marriage in Egypt reached 0.8 per cent of the age group’s total population between 10 to 17 years. The statistics agency said, in a study, that the total number of children who were previously married in Egypt reached 117,220 children.
Causes of the phenomenon
According to the 2017 census, the study showed that the highest rate of early marriages among children was in the Port Said governorate, reaching 95.3 per cent, followed by Sharkia Governorate at 95.1 per cent. On the other hand, the lowest percentage of married minors in South Sinai was 68.3 per cent, followed by Cairo Governorate at 73.3 per cent. Early marriage is a term for marriage that takes place before reaching the legal age, which is set at 18 years, as the Egyptian Child Law of 2008 sets the minimum age for marriage at 18 years for females and males.
The statistics agency attributed the causes of the phenomenon of early marriage to the prevailing culture in society of spinsterhood and fear of late marriage for girls. He explained that among the reasons for the spread of the phenomenon of child marriage are the economic conditions of low-income families, the spread of illiteracy, and the dropout of children from education. A shocking number announced by the Ministry of Health in October 2018 was that 11 per cent of adolescent girls aged 15 to 19 years are married or previously married, and one in 20 girls aged 15 to 17 years is married.
The irony is that in the same month, the case of a girl named Farha Nasr exploded after she spoke to a satellite TV station in a phone call in which she said that she married at the age of 16 in front of the village elders. Farha indicated that her marriage was not documented, given that she had not reached the age of 18. She added that she suffered from continuous beatings and insults in her marriage, noting that her husband divorced her on the same day, and then refused to acknowledge her pregnancy and her child. She continued, “My ex-husband refuses to recognise his daughter until now, and my daughter has no birth certificate yet, despite her birth eight months ago. My divorce was on the same day as the official marriage, and my child is without a father.”
The law sets the official marriage age at 18 years. Many circumvent the law by not documenting marriage certificates, especially in the countryside and Upper Egypt.
