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forced marriage
Airport metal detectors will be triggered, which will give the girls a chance to talk to staff privately.
750 million women alive today were married as children; more than one in three before they were 15 years old. Over the next 30 years, it's estimated that at least 280 million more girls under 18 will be married. The numbers are staggering. But behind each statistic is a child robbed of the right to make their own critical choices in life, to determine their own destiny, and to realize their full potential.
Alone, this law may not directly change much; it should go hand in hand with the support of more institutional and legal framework aimed at providing women with space and time to pursue their education and general development free of external pressures.
2015 promises to be a transformative year on the international development front and is therefore an appropriate time to reflect on a noteworthy milestone. The United Nations enters its 70th year -- and like some 70-year-olds, the beleaguered UN has found new vigour and relevance in people's lives, with Canada playing a role in some noteworthy accomplishments.
At 23 years of age, Nasreen Sheikh radically redefines what it means to be a Nepali woman. She is a Sunni Muslim living in a predominately Hindu community and is the founder of a fair-trade sewing collective called Local Women's Handicrafts. Nasreen is an outlier in her community. Typically, most Nepali girls marry between the ages of 15 and 18. The pressure to have a married daughter began to increase with each year Nasreen remained single however, and in 2014, Nasreen's parents decided that they had to take action. For Nasreen, this arranged marriage would have meant the end of Local Women's Handicrafts.
Canada's Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander has tabled a bill called The Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices act in the parliament last month. However, some criticize the name of the bill and call it pretty loaded one. But violence against women is absolutely barbaric act. It must be addressed strongly.
Deaths as a result of unsafe abortions are preventable. Unfortunately, the Canadian government has no intention of saving women's lives through the provision of access to safe abortion services. The government will not fund safe abortion services in its overseas initiatives, as part of Canada's contribution to the 2010 Muskoka Initiative on maternal and child health. In addition, they also refuse to provide funding to organizations that would give women and girls referrals to safe abortion services. Canada's refusal to fund abortion services, even in cases of rape as a weapon of war and for young women and girls in early and forced marriage, is unacceptable. The WHO clearly states that in countries where there are few restrictions on the availability of safe abortion services, deaths and illness are dramatically reduced.
If we don't like the other person we don't have to date them again, and we certainly don't have to marry them. But according to statistics from the UN, that's not the case for everyone -- an estimated 55 per cent of marriages in the world are arranged.
