tangent4ronpaul
03-15-2013, 08:04 AM
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130313-child-brides-marriage-women-sinclair-photography/
How many children and teenage girls are ready for marriage? Yet the practice is shockingly prevalent: One out of nine girls in developing countries will be married by age 15, according to the United Nations. An estimated 14.2 million girls a year will become child brides by 2020 if nothing changes.
Driven largely by poverty and cultural traditions, such marriages are usually arranged by family members. The physical and emotional consequences can be life shattering, even fatal.
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Stephanie Sinclair has been documenting child marriage all over the world for more than a decade. Her work, which was featured in a National Geographic magazine feature in 2011, has raised awareness and helped educate both citizens and world leaders. She spoke to us after attending a recent United Nations' Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) event focused on addressing the problem of child marriage. (Pictures: The secret world of child brides.)
What do you find most disturbing about child marriage?
I think the thing that we must acknowledge is that in most cases these young children do not want to be married. They want normal lives. They want to play with their friends, they want to be educated, and they want to have a full adolescence. These marriages rob many girls of their innocence, many times before puberty, and this is something that as a global society we cannot tolerate. The bottom line is that child marriage isn't just harmful to the girls involved. It's at the root of so many other societal ills: poverty, disease, maternal mortality, infant mortality, violence against women. All of those are symptoms connected to the same problem. If you solve the child marriage problem, these other issues benefit as well. And as the speaker at last week's CSW event put it: Let's be honest, when an eight-year-old has sex with a 20-something-year old, that's rape. It is child rape. It's something we cannot be okay with.
(...)
OH GOODY! - WE MUST spit in the face of Islam and invade a bunch of countries so we can FORCE our morality on different cultures and religions! What could possibly go wrong? :rolleyes:
Egypt Islamists say UN women’s rights declaration is threat to society
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has warned that a UN document demanding global standards to prevent violence against women is un-Islamic and would lead to the “complete degradation of society.”
Governments and NGOs from around the world are to wrap up two weeks of discussions in New York on ways to end violence against women and children with the aim of reaching a consensus by Friday.
But the Muslim Brotherhood, from which President Mohamed Morsi hails, said the document includes articles “that contradict established principles of Islam, undermine Islamic ethics” and, if ratified, “would lead to the complete disintegration of society.”
The movement argued against imposing universal standards to fight violence against women and called on women’s organisations “to commit to their religion and the morals of their communities… and not be deceived with misleading calls for decadent modernisation and the path of subversive immorality.”
The Brotherhood’s statement is its clearest yet on women and their role in society — an issue the group had tried to skirt around since being thrust into power following a popular uprising in 2011.
The Brotherhood warned that “decadence awaits our world” should the UN document be signed.
It said it opposed 10 key points of the text, including “full equality in marriage legislation” and “cancelling the need for a husband’s consent in matters like travel, work or use of contraception.”
It slammed “granting wives full rights to file legal complaints against husbands accusing them of rape or sexual harassment” as well as “removing the authority of divorce from husbands and placing it in the hands of judges.”
The Brotherhood said the document provided society with “destructive tools to undermine the family,” including “granting girls full sexual freedom” and “providing contraceptives to adolescent girls and training them in their use.”
It also opposed the “full sharing of roles within the family between men and women, such as spending, childcare and domestic chores.”
It said the document’s provisions would “subvert society as a whole and drag it into pre-Islamic ignorance.”
Diplomats at the conference have said the Vatican, Iran and Russia are leading attempts to remove language from the final statement that says religion, custom or tradition must not be used as an excuse to avoid a government’s obligation to eliminate violence.
-t
How many children and teenage girls are ready for marriage? Yet the practice is shockingly prevalent: One out of nine girls in developing countries will be married by age 15, according to the United Nations. An estimated 14.2 million girls a year will become child brides by 2020 if nothing changes.
Driven largely by poverty and cultural traditions, such marriages are usually arranged by family members. The physical and emotional consequences can be life shattering, even fatal.
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Stephanie Sinclair has been documenting child marriage all over the world for more than a decade. Her work, which was featured in a National Geographic magazine feature in 2011, has raised awareness and helped educate both citizens and world leaders. She spoke to us after attending a recent United Nations' Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) event focused on addressing the problem of child marriage. (Pictures: The secret world of child brides.)
What do you find most disturbing about child marriage?
I think the thing that we must acknowledge is that in most cases these young children do not want to be married. They want normal lives. They want to play with their friends, they want to be educated, and they want to have a full adolescence. These marriages rob many girls of their innocence, many times before puberty, and this is something that as a global society we cannot tolerate. The bottom line is that child marriage isn't just harmful to the girls involved. It's at the root of so many other societal ills: poverty, disease, maternal mortality, infant mortality, violence against women. All of those are symptoms connected to the same problem. If you solve the child marriage problem, these other issues benefit as well. And as the speaker at last week's CSW event put it: Let's be honest, when an eight-year-old has sex with a 20-something-year old, that's rape. It is child rape. It's something we cannot be okay with.
(...)
OH GOODY! - WE MUST spit in the face of Islam and invade a bunch of countries so we can FORCE our morality on different cultures and religions! What could possibly go wrong? :rolleyes:
Egypt Islamists say UN women’s rights declaration is threat to society
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has warned that a UN document demanding global standards to prevent violence against women is un-Islamic and would lead to the “complete degradation of society.”
Governments and NGOs from around the world are to wrap up two weeks of discussions in New York on ways to end violence against women and children with the aim of reaching a consensus by Friday.
But the Muslim Brotherhood, from which President Mohamed Morsi hails, said the document includes articles “that contradict established principles of Islam, undermine Islamic ethics” and, if ratified, “would lead to the complete disintegration of society.”
The movement argued against imposing universal standards to fight violence against women and called on women’s organisations “to commit to their religion and the morals of their communities… and not be deceived with misleading calls for decadent modernisation and the path of subversive immorality.”
The Brotherhood’s statement is its clearest yet on women and their role in society — an issue the group had tried to skirt around since being thrust into power following a popular uprising in 2011.
The Brotherhood warned that “decadence awaits our world” should the UN document be signed.
It said it opposed 10 key points of the text, including “full equality in marriage legislation” and “cancelling the need for a husband’s consent in matters like travel, work or use of contraception.”
It slammed “granting wives full rights to file legal complaints against husbands accusing them of rape or sexual harassment” as well as “removing the authority of divorce from husbands and placing it in the hands of judges.”
The Brotherhood said the document provided society with “destructive tools to undermine the family,” including “granting girls full sexual freedom” and “providing contraceptives to adolescent girls and training them in their use.”
It also opposed the “full sharing of roles within the family between men and women, such as spending, childcare and domestic chores.”
It said the document’s provisions would “subvert society as a whole and drag it into pre-Islamic ignorance.”
Diplomats at the conference have said the Vatican, Iran and Russia are leading attempts to remove language from the final statement that says religion, custom or tradition must not be used as an excuse to avoid a government’s obligation to eliminate violence.
-t