Does Climate Change Increase the Risk of Child Marriage? A Look at What We Know - And What We Don't - With Lessons from Bangladesh and Mozambique
![handle is hein.journals/coljgl38 and id is 106 raw text is:
COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF GENDER AND LAW
DOES CLIMATE CHANGE INCREASE THE RISK OF
CHILD MARRIAGE? A LOOK AT WHAT WE KNOW-
AND WHAT WE DON'T-WITH LESSONS FROM
BANGLADESH AND MOZAMBIQUE
CHRISTIE MCLEOD, HEATHER BARR & KATHARINA RALL*
INTRODUCTION
Beauty (a pseudonym) does not know exactly how old she was when she got married.
She is now around forty years old, and her oldest child, a son, is twenty-five. She lives in
a rural village in Noakhali district in Bangladesh. In an interview with Human Rights
Watch (HRW), Beauty said:
River erosion took our house, so we came here .. . We didn't know
anyone, so we were vulnerable, so my husband was able to threaten us.
He told my father, I will marry your daughter, or I will burn your house
down. My father had refused to give me to him because he already had
a wife, but then he threatened us.1
Her husband eventually abandoned her and their three children to return to his first
wife. As a single mother, Beauty relies oni agricultural work to feed her children and
often loses the chance to work due to regular flooding in her area. Even though tuition is
waived for primary school in Bangladesh, she was forced to take her two daughters out of
school after class five and class three,2. as they could not afford to purchase school
* Christie McLeod is in her final year of a joint degree program to obtain a Juris Doctor at Osgoode Hall Law
School and Master in Environmental Studies at York University. Heather Barr is acting co-director of the
women's rights division at Human Rights Watch. She has written extensively for Human Rights Watch on
child marriage, including reports on based on research in Bangladesh and Nepal, and related work on
locations including Afghanistan, European Union states, Japan, Latin America, Malaysia, Myanmar, Papua
New Guinea, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Katharina Rall is a researcher with the
Environment and Human Rights division at Human Rights Watch where she focuses on research and
advocacy on climate change.
1 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, MARRY BEFORE YOUR HOUSE IS SWEPT AWAY: CHILD MARRIAGE IN BANGLADESH
34 (2015), https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reportpdf/bangladesh06l5_web.pdf
[https://perma.cc/G7DK-9TGL] [hereinafter HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, MARRY BEFORE YOUR HOUSE IS SWEPT
AWAY]. Polygamy is legal under some circumstances in Bangladesh.
38.1
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