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June 17, 2020
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June 17, 2020
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Still Millions of Child Brides in the World: Let’s Honor Their Sacrifice with a Statue

In Italy the controversy over Montanelli’s statue is raging because he never repented for his “Child Bride” 80 years ago, but let’s talk about the actual crime

Tiziana FerrariobyTiziana Ferrario
Milioni di spose bambine nel mondo ancora oggi: ricordiamone il sacrificio con una statua

Adolescents in Nepal perform a drama about child marriage as part of a global UNICEF programme to help educate and end child marriage (Photo UNICEF/UN0/Panday)

Time: 3 mins read

In Italiano

I had encountered Mariam during one of my many trips to Afganistan. Barely 13 years old, she  had been forced to marry a man 30 years older. She got pregnant and risked dying, because a pregnancy, at that age and without adequate care, can end up quite badly. She felt weak, she had abandoned school and the husband had started beating her because she could not also take care of the house.

Child marriage chart

She had tried running away, but every time her father took her back to her torturer to whom she had been sold in order to feed the other children.                                                           

Ignorance and poverty lead to this and unfortunately it happens in many countries. Mariam’s story is not an exception, but it concerns millions of little girls, not only in Afghanistan. As  Save the Children writes on its site, every year millions of little girls and adolescents in the world, under the age of 18, are married off to adult or elderly men. In Bangladesh, Mozambique, the Republic of Central Africa, Niger and South Sudan more than 40% of the girls who marry are between 15 and 19 years of age. In Chad, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Madagascar the percentage drops to 30 to 40%. And it’s between 20 and 30% in the countries that we see in yellow on the map above. Childbirth is their principal cause of death.

These are spine-chilling figures that show how problems for women still remain the same almost 100 years after the campaign in Abyssinia where  Indro Montanelli, at the time a soldier, bought a 12 year-old girl to satisfy his sexual urges caused by the testosterone of a young man away from home:

“She was 12 years old, but don’t think I was a brute” he said in 1972 on Gianni Bisiach’s  TV Show L’Ora della Verità. “At 12 years of age those people are already women. [….] I needed a woman at that age. My non-commissioned officer bought her for me, together with a horse and a rifle, altogether 500 lire [….] She was a docile little animal; every15 days she met me wherever I was together with the wives of the others officers.” 

No second thoughts, no embarrassment in remembering that episode that he later also recounted to Enzo Biagi. It’s striking that even at a distance of years, in the mind of this already mature man there never arose the slightest doubt that that girl and all the others like her who had been married off to soldiers immediately after the first menstruation, had been subjected to violence, and had been robbed of their childhood and adolescence. Even if you’re dark skinned and live in Ethiopia you’re still a little girl and have a right to your childhood and adolescence, and not to be raped to follow a cultural tradition.

Indro Montanelli’s statue in Milan smeared with red paint (Image from yotube)

It was right at the time, and even more so today that we continue to talk about it, but we do it in the wrong manner, reacting with violence to a violent act. To smear a statue that maybe should never have been where it is–but has by now been there for years–is not the right way to do it. We ought to discuss the issue calmly and propose instead a statue that reminds us of the daily sacrifice of these many child brides, who like so many little slaves, need our help.

The street artist Ozmo did well to dedicate one of his works to Desta’, Montanelli’s child bride, on a Milan wall. He gave her back a certain dignity. What we are missing is a homage to women on the walls and in the piazzas of our cities. There is not a single square in all of Italy with the statue of a woman. Let’s then make other murals, let’s place statues that commemorate great women who are the cause of pride for our country.

It is a lack that must be filled, because our history, our culture, our art, our science is made also of feminine names, that remain invisible. This happens in the rest of the world as well.

Statue of Alice in Central Park

In New York for example, the only statues of women are in Central Park and depict fantasy characters  like Alice in Wonderland, Juliet with Romeo and Mother Goose. No real women. But on August 26, the anniversary of the ratification of women’s right to vote, the first statue dedicated to women who have actually existed will be unveiled. It is the work of the sculptor Margaret Bergmann and represents the three New York suffragettes, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. This is an example that Italy should imitate, but what are we waiting for?

Translation by Salvatore Rotella

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Tiziana Ferrario

Tiziana Ferrario

Tiziana Ferrario, milanese, giornalista per anni conduttrice e inviata di politica estera per la Rai. E' stata corrispondente da New York. Ha seguito guerre e crisi umanitarie. Per il suo lavoro sui conflitti in Afghanistan Medio Oriente e Africa, è stata nominata dal Presidente Ciampi Cavaliere al merito dell’Ordine della Repubblica. Ha seguito il passaggio dalla presidenza Obama a quella Trump; i suoi libri recenti: "Orgoglio e Pregiudizi il risveglio delle donne ai tempi di Trump" Chiarelettere, 2018; "Uomini, è ora di giocare senza falli!", 2020; è appena uscito il romanzo "La principessa afghana e il giardino delle giovani ribelli", Chiarelettere, 2021 Tiziana Ferrario is a Milanese journalist, and for years has been an anchor and foreign policy correspondent for Rai based in New York. She followed wars and humanitarian crises and was nominated for the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic by President Ciampi Cavaliere for her work on the conflicts in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Africa. Ferrario followed the transition from Obama’s presidency to Trump’s, and wrote “Clock and Prejudice: The Awakening of Women in the Time of Trump” Chiaralettere, 2018.

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Tags: Child marriageGender EqualityIndro MontanelliPublic monumentsStatuesStatues of womenwomen's rightsWomen's rights in Afghanistan
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