More Syrian child brides in Jordan amid poverty, uncertainty

FILE - A young actress demonstrates at an Amnesty International event to denounce child marriage in Rome. (AFP)
Updated 07 August 2017
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More Syrian child brides in Jordan amid poverty, uncertainty

JORDAN: Married at 15 and divorced at 16, a Syrian teen says she regrets having said yes to a handsome suitor — a stranger who turned into an abusive husband.
Yet the reasons that transformed her into a child bride have become more prevalent among Syrians who live in Jordanian exile because of a six-year-old civil war back home. More families marry off daughters to ease the financial burden or say marriage is the way to protect the “honor” of girls seen as vulnerable outside their homeland.
Figures from Jordan’s population census document the long suspected increase for the first time. In 2015, brides between the ages of 13 and 17 made up almost 44 percent of all Syrian females in Jordan getting married that year, compared to 33 percent in 2010.
With Syrians expected to remain in exile for years, it’s a harmful trend for refugees and their overburdened host country, UN and Jordanian officials say.
More Syrian girls will lose out on education, since most child brides drop out of school. They typically marry fellow Syrians who are just a few years older, often without a steady job — a constellation that helps perpetuate poverty. And they will likely have more children than those who marry as adults, driving up Jordan’s fertility rate.
“This means we will have more people, more than the government of Jordan can afford,” said Maysoon Al-Zoabi, secretary general of Jordan’s Higher Population Council.
The figures on early marriage were drawn from Jordan’s November 2015 census and compiled in a new study.
The census counted 9.5 million people living in Jordan, including 2.9 non-Jordanians.
Among the foreigners were 1.265 million Syrians — or double the number of refugees registered in the kingdom since the outbreak of the Syria conflict in 2011. The other Syrians include migrant laborers who came before the war, and those who never registered as refugees.
The figures on early marriage include all Syrians in Jordan, not just registered refugees.
Many came from southern Syria’s culturally conservative countryside, where even before the conflict girls typically married in their teens. Still, the study shows a higher rate of early marriage among Syrians in exile than in their homeland.
The teen divorcee fled Syria’s Daraa province in 2012, along with her parents and four siblings. The family eventually settled in a small town in the northern Mafraq province.
The parents and the teen, now 17, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the stigma of divorce. They said they wanted to speak out, nonetheless, in hopes of helping others avoid the same mistake.
Child brides are traditionally shielded from outsiders, and the family provided a rare glimpse at what drives early marriage.
“When we came here, our lives were disrupted,” said the teen’s mother, sitting on a floor cushion in the living room of their small rented home. “If we had remained in Syria, I would not have allowed her to get married this young.”
The family scrapes by on small cash stipends and food vouchers from UN aid agencies, along with the father’s below-minimum-wage income as a laborer.
Worse, the family feels adrift.
The parents, fearful their children would be harassed, especially the girls, did not enroll them in local schools, typically overcrowded to accommodate large numbers of Syrians.
In such a setting — girls sitting at home without a seeming purpose — the push to have them get married becomes stronger.
An older sister of the teen also married as a minor. The mother said she often feels regret about her daughter having been robbed of her childhood.
The younger girl spent most of her time at home, brooding. She had no girlfriends since she didn’t go to school and was only allowed to leave the house with her mother, in line with traditions. In any case, there was nothing to do in the small desert town.
Two years ago, a young Syrian man asked for the teen’s hand, after introductions had been made by a go-between. The intermediary talked up the stranger, saying he had job prospects and could afford his own apartment.
The teen, 15 at the time, accepted. “I was bored and sad,” she said. “I wanted to get married.”
The parents said the young man seemed immature, but that their daughter insisted. The wedding took place a month later, and the bride wore a white dress.
The marriage contract was sealed by a Syrian lawyer, not a Jordanian religious court judge, meaning it was not officially recognized in Jordan.
Local law sets the minimum age of marriage for girls at 18, though Jordanian judges often allow exceptions for brides between the ages of 15 and 17.
In 2015, 11.6 percent of Jordanian females who married that year were minors, compared to 9.6 percent in 2010, indicating a slight rise that Al-Zoubi believes is caused in part to Jordanians being influenced by Syrian customs.
After marriage, the Syrian teen moved to a different town with her husband, and his promises quickly evaporated. The couple moved in with his extended clan, and the teen turned into a maid, according to her parents. The teen said her unemployed husband beat her.
Despite the abuse, she said she wanted to stay in the marriage, fearful of the shame of divorce. Her father eventually insisted on divorce to extract her from what he felt was a harmful situation.
After returning home, the teen briefly attended an informal education and children’s support program called Makani that is run by the UN child welfare agency and other aid groups at centers across Jordan. She started making friends, but stayed away again when a new group of students signed up.
Robert Jenkins, the head of UNICEF in Jordan, said that by the time girls are married, it’s often too late to get them back to education.
“Our absolute first line of defense is prevention (of early marriage),” he said, adding that the agency tries to support families and teens so they won’t opt for early marriage.
In the Zaatari refugee camp, such intervention appears to have had an impact, said Hussam Assaf, 32, who rents and sells white bridal gowns and colorful engagement dresses in the local market.
Assaf said the typical age of his customers in Zaatari is 16 or 17, compared to 14 or 15 in his hometown in rural Syria, crediting counseling programs by aid groups with the change.
The young divorcee, meanwhile, hasn’t ruled out marriage in the future. She said it’s unlikely she’ll ever go back to school because she has already missed five years of learning.
Still, she thinks about what could have been.
“If I had continued my education, it would have been better,” she said. Her trauma of her brief marriage “has made me weaker,” she said.


Lebanon to hold parliament session on January 9 to elect president

Updated 13 sec ago
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Lebanon to hold parliament session on January 9 to elect president

  • State news agency: ‘Speaker Nabih Berri called a parliament session to elect a president of the republic on January 9’
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s parliament will hold a session in January to elect a new president, official media reported on Thursday, a day after an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire began and following more than two years of presidential vacuum.
“Speaker Nabih Berri called a parliament session to elect a president of the republic on January 9,” the official National News Agency reported.

Israeli tank fires at 3 south Lebanese towns

Updated 10 min 2 sec ago
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Israeli tank fires at 3 south Lebanese towns

  • Lebanese security sources and state media report tank fire struck Markaba, Wazzani and Kfarchouba

BEIRUT: Israeli tank fire hit three towns along Lebanon’s southeast border with Israel on Thursday, Lebanese security sources and state media said, a day after a ceasefire barring “offensive military operations” came into force.

Tank fire struck Markaba, Wazzani and Kfarchouba, all of which lie within two kilometers of the Blue Line demarcating the border between Lebanon and Israel. One of the security sources said two people were wounded in Markaba.

A ceasefire between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah took effect on Wednesday under a deal brokered by the US and France, intended to allow people in both countries to start returning to homes in border areas shattered by 14 months of fighting.

But managing the returns have been complicated. Israeli troops remain stationed within Lebanese territory in towns along the border, and on Thursday morning the Israeli military urged residents of towns along the border strip not to return yet for their own safety.

The three towns hit on Thursday morning lie within that strip.

There was no immediate comment on the tank rounds from Hezbollah or Israel, who had been fighting for over a year in parallel with the Gaza war.

The agreement, a rare diplomatic feat in a region racked by conflict, ended the deadliest confrontation between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group in years. But Israel is still fighting its other arch foe, the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in the Gaza Strip.

Under the ceasefire terms, Israeli forces can take up to 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had instructed the military not to allow residents back to villages near the border.

Lebanon’s speaker of parliament Nabih Berri, the top interlocutor for Lebanon in negotiating the deal, had said on Wednesday that residents could return home.


Syria war monitor says more than 130 dead in army-militant clashes in north

Updated 41 min 15 sec ago
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Syria war monitor says more than 130 dead in army-militant clashes in north

  • Clashes followed “an operation launched by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said
  • The air forces of both Syria and its ally Russia struck the attacking militants

BEIRUT: A monitor of Syria’s war said on Thursday that more than 130 combatants had been killed in clashes between the army and militant groups in the country’s north, as the government also reported fierce fighting.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the toll in the clashes which began a day earlier after the militants launched an attack “has risen to 132, including 65 fighters” from Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, 18 from allied factions “and 49 members of the regime forces.”


Palestinian leader Abbas lays ground for succession

Updated 28 November 2024
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Palestinian leader Abbas lays ground for succession

  • Abbas, 89, still rules despite his term as head of the Palestinian Authority ending in 2009, and has resisted pressure to appoint a successor or a vice president

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday announced who would replace him in an interim period when the post becomes vacant, effectively removing the Islamist movement Hamas from any involvement in a future transition.
Abbas, 89, still rules despite his term as head of the Palestinian Authority ending in 2009, and has resisted pressure to appoint a successor or a vice president.
Under current Palestinian law, the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) takes over the Palestinian Authority in the event of a power vacuum.
But the PLC, where Hamas had a majority, no longer exists since Abbas officially dissolved it in 2018 after more than a decade of tensions between his secular party, Fatah, and Hamas, which ousted the Palestinian Authority from power in the Gaza Strip in 2007.
In a decree, Abbas said the Palestinian National Council chairman, Rawhi Fattuh, would be his temporary replacement should the position should become vacant.
“If the position of the president of the national authority becomes vacant in the absence of the legislative council, the Palestinian National Council president shall assume the duties... temporarily,” it said.
The decree added that following the transition period, elections must be held within 90 days. This deadline can be extended in the event of a “force majeure,” it said.
The PNC is the parliament of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which has over 700 members from the Palestinian territories and abroad.
Hamas, which does not belong to the PLO, has no representation on the council. The PNC deputies are not elected, but appointed.
The decree refers to the “delicate stage in the history of the homeland and the Palestinian cause” as war rages in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, after the latter’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel in October last year.
There are also persistent divisions between Hamas and Fatah.
The decree comes on the same day that a ceasefire entered into force in Lebanon after an agreement between Israel and Hamas’s ally, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The Palestinian Authority appears weaker than ever, unable to pay its civil servants and threatened by Israeli far-right ministers’ calls to annex all or part of the occupied West Bank, an ambition increasingly less hidden by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.


Israeli military says it downed drone smuggling weapons from Egypt

Updated 27 November 2024
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Israeli military says it downed drone smuggling weapons from Egypt

CAIRO: The Israeli military said on Wednesday it shot down a drone that was carrying weapons and crossed from Egypt to Israel.
When asked about the latest drone incident, Egyptian security sources said they had no knowledge of such an incident.
In two separate incidents in October, Israel also said it downed two drones smuggling weapons from Egyptian territory.
Israeli officials have said during the war in Gaza that Palestinian militant group Hamas used tunnels running under the border into Egypt’s Sinai region to smuggle arms.
However, Egypt says it destroyed tunnel networks leading to Gaza years ago and created a buffer zone and border fortifications that prevent smuggling.