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Jerome Delay / AP
Sarey Amadou, 14, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 20. Even though the boy she had a crush on offered a dowry for her, her father insisted that she marry her first cousin, who lives several hours away in the larger village of Guidan Roumdji. Even during the best of times, one out of every three girls in Niger marries before her 15th birthday, a rate of child marriage among the highest in the world, according to a UNICEF survey. Now this custom is being layered on top of a crisis. At times of severe drought, parents pushed to the wall by poverty and hunger are marrying their daughters at even younger ages. A girl married off is one less mouth to feed, and the dowry money she brings in goes to feed others.
This drought-prone country of 16 million is so short on food that it is ranked dead last by international aid organization Save the Children in the percentage of children receiving a "minimum acceptable diet."
-- Reported by the Associated Press
Jerome Delay / AP
Children help prepare the evening meal in a courtyard in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 21. In Hawkantaki, it is the rhythm of the land that shapes the cycle of life and crucially, when they marry their daughters.
Jerome Delay / AP
Young girls stand in a field of millet outside the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 19. In a normal year, the green shoots vaulted out of the ground and rose as high as 13 feet, a wall tall enough to conceal an adult man. This time, they only reached the waist.
Jerome Delay / AP
Rama, 14, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 18. Her mother says she is 12. Her husband brought a 100,000 francs ($200) dowry for her in the fall of 2011. Although her mother denies that poverty played a role in precipitating the marriage, Rama says her family would normally have waited at least one more year. "It's because the rainy season was not good that I was married off, and because we are very poor."
Jerome Delay / AP
Children play in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 19.
Jerome Delay / AP
Shoubalee Lawali, 15, from Hawkantaki, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Kintee, Niger, July 19. Her husband is in his mid-20s. She was taken to his village, Kintee, where she now lives with him. "My father has three wives and 23 kids. There are lots of problems at home. I think it was for this reason that they married me."Last year, before the start of the harvest, there were 10 girls in Hawkantaki between the ages of 11 and 15. By spring 2012, seven were married, and another two are engaged.
Jerome Delay / AP
Elders gather for prayer at the mosque in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 18. In Niger, the legal age of marriage is 15. The law, however, only applies for civil ceremonies officiated by the state.
Jerome Delay / AP
A man and a boy exit after prayer at the mosque in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 18.
Jerome Delay / AP
Sadiya Oumarou, 15, originally from Hawkantaki, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Tabouka, Niger, July 19. Sadiya was the first of the girls to be married, leaving Hawkantaki for the village of Tabouka last year. One by one, her girlfriends were all married off except one. Like the others, she did not have her period when she became a new bride.
Jerome Delay / AP
Children walk in a courtyard in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger.
Jerome Delay / AP
Aicha, 14, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Kaihi, Niger, July 20. Originally from Hawkantaki, Aicha has been married for seven months.
Jerome Delay / AP
Young girls stare at a visitor in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 19.
Jerome Delay / AP
Marliya, 14, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 20. Marliya's family was paid just 50,000 francs ($100) for her dowry. Her father used up the money long before her wedding, and she was sent to her husband's home with only a tarp to sleep on.
Jerome Delay / AP
Young women walk past a group of men recharging their cell phones under a tree in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 20.
Jerome Delay / AP
Zali Idy, 12, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger. Zali was married in 2011. In January 2012, soon after she turned 12, she was carried on a bullock cart to her 23-year-old husband's home.
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It's a sad and heartbreaking story, it's life. Before the pots start calling the kettles black, take a few minutes and look in your own back yard. Check the number of teen Pregnancy in America. Check out the number of women being abused daily in America. Forced into prostitution not only for drugs but to put food on the table, or just to make a living having fun. It's the World we've created, has nothing to do with anything but being human. I feel sorry for these children, America went though the same thing openly, today it's a closed door market. It's life, it's how the World works.
1 guy had 3 wives and 23 kids., If your so poor and cant eat why take 3 wives and have 23 kids?
seems they are just perverts only concerned with having sex.
You're looking at people that only advanced to the point of walking upright so what do you expect.
Another great product of Islam and the great mohamme. If this has been going on for ages does it extend to time of mohamme? Just saying, and not knowing, maybe the movie has some facts in it.
This is just SAD for whatever reason.....it makes me sick little girls are being trading for goods . I understand the reason but it still is unjust and sick....THIS country helps so many other countries that don't deserve our help (they hate us) but yet we send BILLIONS to them (they want to kill us) but we would let this go on....pisses me off were our countries priorities are.....I have 4 girls and 7 gran daughters....my heart breaks for these little girls.
Thank God for UNICEF - they will help sterilize the whole lot of them and then we don't have to read depressing stories like this. Halloween is coming - time to put $ in those UNICEF cans - so they can go about their business supporting forced abortions and sterilization and we can go back to our pretty little unbothered lives again. Also glad we genetically engineer food now, since making that dangerous sacrifice of ruining the integrity of our food supply so we have more to give to everyone at lower prices has worked out so well.
They all look so sad. It breaks my heart. If you are a woman and born in a westernized country, you are already one of the luckiest people in the world.
All this just proves that earthlings are too barbaric to be included in the Galactic Empire. You've had nearly three million earth years to mature into civilized beings. And this crap is all we see. O.K. so there's maybe one one thousandth of one percent of you who've got it. Not enough. We'll come back in a thousand years or so, and see if we need to annihilate this experiment.
Many of the comments reveal just how remarkably ignorant and/or stupid Americans are with respect to other cultures.
The lion thinks everyone else is motivated by the instincts of a lion. So, because American men who lust for underage girls are motivated by sexual deviancy, Americans think men of other cultures have the same perverted motivations.
While I do not necessarily agree with such marriages, I do not automatically denounce them. Given their dire financial situation, and their culture - which, I believe has always considered dowry-amounts a factor in deciding who gets to marry their daughters - their actions are understandable.
Even if Niger were a prosperous country, this tradition would not diminish. Simply, the dowry amounts would be higher, but the brides would still be young by American standards.
The government should provide free education and free lunch programs for teenage girls and make them productive, happy and useful citizens. Perhaps, there is a need for boarding schools. School curriculum should be Islam-religion free modern education. At the same time, the school curriculum should teach vocational education, so those girls can be self-sufficient after graduation' not depend on those old men. However, those countries do not want Christian or Buddists influence; they want to maintain their own traditions and remain poor and backward.
I read one "solution" is to pay the families that would otherwise sell their girls so that they can afford to feed other mouths in the family and leave the girl in school. How about FREE birth control for all these families? Damn, first you have the family with more kids than they can feed; then you have the young girls married and producing more kids way too early.