69 Caroline Street, Kingsgrove

28/9/15, 2014

Department of Foreign Affairs

GPO Box 36
Sydney, NSW, 2001

Dear Minister Julie Bishop,

I am a student at St Ursulas College, Kingsgrove and I am writing to you to express
my concern about child marriage in developing countries.
Did you know that 10 million girls are forced or arranged into marriage before they
reach 18, each year? Child marriage is a vice of fundamental human rights that has
a massive and ongoing immense effect on a girls life, and the wellbeing of her
family and community. It is one of the eight barriers to education facing the 75
million girls not going to school.
Girls being forced into marriage as young as 12 years old cannot live their lifes as a
child. They cannot experience the fun, they cannot continue to find themselves but
most all they cannot be a child that must act as a women, a wife and a mother which
they are nowhere near to that. Cant you remember the days when you were child?
Because I certainly can and they were a period of my life of happiness and fun but
for girls in developing countries they are horrible. They have a right to live their life
free from violence and discrimination. Lets make this change to make their life one
happy to remember.
Child marriage can have devastating consequences for a girls health. It encourages
for sexual activity at an age when girls bodies are still developing and when they
know little about their body. They are not physically or emotionally ready to give
birth. Children married at a young age face higher risk of death in childbirth and are
particularly vulnerable to pregnancy-related injuries such as obstetric fistula. When a
girl marries as a child, the health of her children suffers too, as evidence shows the
children of child brides are at substantially greater risk of perinatal infant mortality,
morbidity and stillbirths. Child birth deaths are 50% higher in mothers younger than
20 years than in women who give birth later. There is little doubt that reducing child
marriage will help to ensure more children survive into adulthood. This is why there
needs to be stop to child marriage and the change needs to start now!
The end of education for a girl living in developing countries is at the time they are
forced to get married. This plays a negative effect on a girls life as it is denying
them to the right of their education where they can learn beneficial tools for the
future and stopping their ability to attribute to their family and the community which
could lead them out of poverty. Over sixty per cent of child brides in developing
countries have had no formal education. Many girls arent in education because
schools are inaccessible or expensive, because of the traditional role girls are
expected to play in the household, or simply because parents dont see the value of
education for their daughters. Child marriage allows the child to have a lack of
education which lowers their status.

Please object to child marriage! Speak now and champion an end to child marriage
at home and abroad by:
-

Strengthening Australian laws and policy to prevent child marriage

Calling for a UN General Assembly resolving to ban child marriage
Fighting this barricade to education through Australias aid programs

Yours Sincerely,
Romina Vigorito
Year 9 Student at St Ursulas College