Financial burden, risk of violence pressure Syrian girls to marry
Syrian refugee girls in Jordan are being forced to get married at a young age, either to escape sexual violence that is widely spread in refugee camps or to ease the financial troubles of their families.
MAFRAQ, Jordan — Her first husband was a 46-year-old man from Saudi Arabia who already had two wives. Once every few months, he traveled to Jordan for business, and during these visits he would talk to Fatima's aunt about marrying another woman. Her aunt told him she had a suitable candidate in mind: her young niece. Initially, the girl's father didn’t want his daughter to get married at such a young age, but when he found out that the Saudi man was wealthy and religious, he changed his mind.
It wasn’t really up to the bride-to-be to decide whether she wanted to marry this man. As the eldest daughter still living with her parents, she felt like a burden to them. The family had fled Homs to Jordan in 2013 because of the Syrian war, and their financial problems were piling up. Therefore, during the 2014 wedding ceremony, when the sheikh asked her whether she wanted to marry the Saudi, she agreed, hoping for a better future. Fatima was only 14 years old.
From the garden of the Jordanian Women's Union in Mafraq province, she told Al-Monitor about the dreams she'd once had when she still lived in Syria. Fatima, now 15, had fantasized about marrying a handsome, sweet young man like the ones she saw in Hollywood movies, after finishing her education. But her future turned out to be completely different.
"After eight days of living with him in an apartment in Mafraq, he brought me back to my father, saying that he would go to his other wives in Saudi Arabia to spend time with them,'' she said, adding, "But he never came back and acted arrogant when I called him. After three months, I told him I wanted a divorce."
