Population Council, 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 3rd floor, New York, NY, 10017, USA.
Invest in Knowledge, Plot Number 43, Chirunga Road, Box, 506, Zomba, Malawi.
BMC Public Health. 2021 Jul 8;21(1):1350. doi: 10.1186/s12889-021-11434-z.
Child marriage in Malawi is a significant problem with 42.1% of women 20-24 married by age 18. In 2017 the Malawi government formalized legislation to make marriage under age 18 illegal; violators are subject to fines. While leveraging laws to reduce child marriage is common, the enactment of laws and their enforcement has led to some novel practices. One such practice observed in Malawi is marriage withdrawal, where the community intervenes when a child marriage has taken place to force the girl to return to her natal home.
This paper is a qualitative analysis of perceptions regarding marriage withdrawal. We conducted focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with married and unmarried adolescents, parents of adolescents, and key community members in Mangochi and Nkhata Bay. Data were collected as part of an evaluation of the More Than Brides Alliance program aimed at delaying marriage and improving access to sexual and reproductive health services in Malawi.
The knowledge that violation of marriage laws entails substantial fines is widespread and marriage withdrawals are seen by some respondents as a way of enforcing the spirit of child marriage laws while avoiding fines. Some respondents suggest that enforcement of marriage laws has an unintended effect of driving marriages underground. One important disconnect between the laws and the realities of child marriage practices in these communities is that the law holds parents responsible for the marriage and for preventing it, while parents do not necessarily exercise control, particularly when the marriage is precipitated by pregnancy. While parents and other adults view withdrawals as an acceptable resolution of a problematic child marriage, girls noted many drawbacks for withdrawn girls such as stigma and limited education and livelihood opportunities once withdrawn.
Our exploration of perceptions about marriage laws suggest that the imposition of fines may have some unintended consequences, both driving the practice underground and encouraging practices to evade fines, and may be associated with unintended consequences for adolescent girls. Programs to address child marriage should include other approaches that address more distal drivers including poverty and lack of alternatives to child marriage.
This work is part of an RCT registered August 4, 2016 in the AEA RCT registry identified as: AEARCTR-0001463 . See: https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/1463.
马拉维的童婚问题严重，20-24 岁的女性中有 42.1%在 18 岁之前结婚。2017 年，马拉维政府正式将 18 岁以下结婚定为非法；违者将被处以罚款。虽然利用法律来减少童婚是常见的做法，但法律的颁布和执行却导致了一些新的做法。马拉维观察到的一种做法是婚姻撤销，即当童婚发生时，社区会介入，迫使女孩回到娘家。
本文是对婚姻撤销的看法的定性分析。我们在曼戈乔和恩卡塔湾与已婚和未婚青少年、青少年的父母以及关键社区成员进行了焦点小组讨论和深入访谈。这些数据是作为评估“超越新娘联盟”项目的一部分收集的，该项目旨在延迟婚姻并改善马拉维获得性健康和生殖健康服务的机会。
违反婚姻法将被处以巨额罚款的知识广为流传，一些受访者认为，婚姻撤销是执行童婚法精神的一种方式，同时可以避免罚款。一些受访者认为，婚姻法的执行无意中导致了婚姻的地下化。这些社区的童婚实践中，法律和现实之间存在一个重要的脱节，即法律规定父母对婚姻负责，并应防止婚姻发生，但父母不一定行使控制权，特别是当婚姻是由怀孕引发时。尽管父母和其他成年人认为撤销是解决有问题的童婚的一种可接受的方式，但女孩们指出，对于被撤销婚姻的女孩来说，有许多不利之处，如耻辱感以及一旦被撤销，教育和生计机会有限。
我们对婚姻法的看法的探讨表明，罚款的征收可能会产生一些意想不到的后果，既会使这种做法转入地下，又会鼓励人们采取逃避罚款的做法，并且可能会对少女产生意想不到的后果。解决童婚问题的方案应包括解决包括贫困和缺乏童婚替代方案等更遥远的驱动因素的其他方法。
这项工作是 2016 年 8 月 4 日在 AEA RCT 注册的 RCT 的一部分，登记号为：AEARCTR-0001463。见：https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/1463。
