Seven-year old Zain just finished 2nd grade in a rural part of Northern Cairo. His 4-year old cousin, Farida, hasn’t, presumably, begun school yet.
Even though the pair are still learning basic concepts about the world and themselves, they’re now bound together for life, destined for marriage. Recently, their families held an engagement ceremony to formalize their match. Zain’s father paid a $1,000 dowry for the girl.
Pictures of the ceremony show Zain and Farida sitting on a floral couch. Nearby throw pillows are nearly as big as them. Yet there Zain is, trying to put a ring on Farida’s small finger as she looks sheepishly at the camera.
Read More: Child Marriage: Everything You Need to Know
Without context, you might think that the images are just two family members playing a game or taking part in some innocent tradition.
بالصور.."زين وفريدة لبعض".. تفاصيل خطِبة أصغر عروسين بالقليوبيةhttps://t.co/ISzDUVDFpmpic.twitter.com/NEggOVYHlA
— اليوم السابع (@youm7) January 7, 2017
But that’s not what’s happening at all. Zain and Farida are being stripped of their agency, stuffed into outdated marriage roles with no regard for how profoundly this decision will affect them later in life.
“All the family members completely agreed with the engagement process, in spite the couple’s young age,” Zain’s father told the local al-Youm al-Sabe newspaper.
Generally, child marriage is vile and grotesquely exploitative — a young girl gets married to a much older man and is expected to begin bearing children. Rarely is it as absurd as Zain’s and Farida’s arrangement — two children who have almost no awareness of their place in the world expected to go along with a life-defining event.
Arranged marriages are common all around the world, with parents playing decisive matchmaking roles, and the value of this practice is culturally relative.
Child marriage, however, is a completely different matter. Children should never be shuttled into marriage for any purpose. They should be allowed to finish their educations and develop into adults before such a dramatic commitment is considered.
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While Zain is also being denied a fair shot at life, child marriage overwhelmingly affects girls like Farida who are regularly treated like cattle.
In Egypt, 17% of girls are married before the age of 18 and 2% are married before they turn 15. Globally, more than 700 million women alive today were married off as children. And more than one and three girls in developing countries will be married as children. Unless cultural, legal, and practical changes are made, 1.2 billion girls will be married off by 2050, according to Girls Not Brides.
As Danielle Selby wrote for Global Citizen:
Young girls who are married off are more likely to have children while still physically immature. They are psychologically unprepared and unequipped to become mothers, which means they tend to have more health problems during pregnancy and childbirth due to inadequate health care and their babies have a reduced chance for survival.
By robbing girls of a chance to learn, grow, and fully realize their potential, child marriage systematically disempowers them. It ensures that they remain dependent on others all their lives, strips them of their agency, and hands control over their lives to someone else.
The legal age of marriage in Egypt has been 18 since 2008, but enforcement remains weak. This is especially true today, as Egypt’s civil society unravels under the pressure of a failed revolution, quasi martial law, and a withering economy.
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Child marriage increases in periods of instability, when families are desperate for income and laws are hardly enforced. This could be why Zain’s and Farida’s families felt they could publicly celebrate the engagement.
While Zain and Farida are not technically married yet, their engagement exposes deep societal problems. Playdates, school, and the random wanderings of childhood should be all they worry about — not marriage.