Eastern Zambia. Edina Banda is 14 years old when her first period arrives. Her grandmother, who she lives with, becomes happy: "Good, you are an adult now". Then she locks the teenager in a room. She is to be educated in taking care of a man.
During that time, I was not allowed to go out or talk to anyone, says Edina Banda, today 21, during a visit to Sweden together with the organization Plan.
Various women came there and taught me things: how to take care of the household and how to handle a man in bed. Then I was supposed to show what I had learned. If I did something wrong, they pinched me.
Child marriage is prohibited by law in most of the world. Despite this, twelve million girls under the age of 18 are married every year, according to reports from Plan and Unicef. This corresponds to one girl every three seconds. Of these, around 480,000 are under 15.
A form of slavery
Locked in the "training room", Edina Banda is urged to forget school and her friends: "You will take care of a man now". Then she is sent to her new home and handed over to her husband – a man in his 30s who she has never seen before – and his family.
The marriage is celebrated ceremoniously with dance and traditional food. Edina Banda is in shock.
In my eyes, he was so old. There was nothing I liked about him.
In Plan's report, it is stated that child marriage is in practice a form of slavery. Girls are taken from their families and friends, often with violence. They are forced to stop going to school and are often subjected to sexual violence. Of the 251 girls and young women interviewed in the report, many tell of physical and psychological violence – violence that they are expected to tolerate.
Demanded sex
For Edina Banda, life as a "married" person consists of endless household chores. She wakes up early, fetches water, and looks for firewood in the forest. She cleans, cooks. For every day, she becomes more and more isolated. The husband is violent and controlling.
He abused me physically, psychologically, and sexually. He never asked, just demanded things, demanded sex. If I said no, he hit me.
He did not care that I was a child. I was so small, I was not at all ready.
For Edina Banda's own family, the "marriage" was a business deal. For the daughter, they received a sum of money from the husband's parents.
Escaped the marriage
In Zambia – where 64 percent according to the World Bank live below the poverty line – child marriage has been prohibited by law since the end of 2023. Today, there are 2.1 million Zambian girls and women who married before the age of 18, according to a Unicef report from last year. Drought and disease outbreaks exacerbate poverty and cause families to defy the laws in order to put food on the table.
The progressive laws on paper are often circumvented. Many "marriages" are also informal agreements that go under the radar – unregistered but socially and culturally accepted. It is clear that legislation alone cannot stop child marriages, Unicef notes.
Six months into the "marriage", Edina Banda decides to escape. There is still time – she has not yet become pregnant.
I decided that I deserve better. I told myself: "It's high time I take the risk".
Under the cover of darkness, she flees with the help of a woman in the village. Soon she gets in touch with Plan International, whose local staff ensure that a settlement can be reached between the families. Edina Banda gets to start school again.
Traditional leaders
Today, she is realizing her childhood dream: to study to become a nurse. In parallel, the 21-year-old works with a Plan-supported project where she lectures in schools and for traditional leaders. They also help girls who have been forced into marriage, sometimes by simply picking them up and driving them home to their parents.
The biggest challenge is to get the traditional leaders, who to a large extent practice their own legal systems, to change their way of thinking. But more and more are starting to listen, she says.
We sit down with them and say "okay – it's tradition, but we should actually get rid of the harmful norms that contribute to child marriage". Several of them support us and work hand in hand with us now.
Talking openly about her own trauma has not been self-evident. People talked, whispered: "She was married before". But:
I realized that it doesn't help to be silent. That I have to stand up and help others.
When they see me, they realize: "This happened to her too, but she is still a person – I can also survive and do what I want with my life".
Top ten countries with the highest incidence of "child marriage" in the world:
Niger: 76 percent of all women aged 20-24 were married when they were under 18.
Central African Republic: 61 percent.
Chad: 61 percent.
Mali: 54 percent.
South Sudan: 52 percent.
Bangladesh: 51 percent.
Burkina Faso: 51 percent.
Mozambique: 48 percent.
Guinea: 47 percent.
Somalia: 45 percent.
In absolute numbers, however, India is by far the country in the world with the most child marriages. Next are Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, and Nigeria.
Source: Unicef
