Rohingya teens forced into early marriages for survival
Many Rohingyas seeking refuge in Cox's Bazar marry their young children off in an attempt to protect them from rape, hunger and trafficking.
A view of a refugee camp where Rohingya people, having fled oppression within ongoing military operations in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, live in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. December 8, 2017.
Early marriages are common among the Rohingya community. After state persecution forced the mainly Muslim Rohingyas to flee from Myanmar to Bangladesh, aid workers say the age limit for marriage has dropped further, but this time as an ostensible survival tactic.
About 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled army-led violence in Buddhist-majority Myanmar since August and are living in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Some are stranded at the Tombru border point, a no man's land, after Myanmar reportedly began building bunkers and threatened the refugees to leave and enter Bangladesh, which denied their entry.
Aid workers say women and girls are most at threat from predators and human traffickers lurking in the poorly-supervised camps.
The International Organization for Migration has documented cases of refugee women being lured away from the camps with promises of marriage or jobs that end instead in forced labour or sex work.
Families also feel marrying their children allows passing on the responsibility of protecting children to the new in-laws or the husband.
TRT World's Sandra Gathmann attends the wedding of two teenagers in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.
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