Topic:
Country: Niger
Delegate Name: Marrissa Bertocchini
UN Women-Niger-Bertocchini
Delegate Marissa Bertocchini
Forest Hills Central High School
Republic of Niger
UN Women: Child Marriage
Child marriage is an abhorrent occurance that is common among many impoverished nations across the world. Child marriage is formally defined by the United Nations as when a minor, a person who is under the age of 18, becomes eloped to a person of an older, non-minor age. While there are very highly looked upon advantages to the process, we cannot ignore the dreadful root of such economic advancement. Niger is far from exempt of these occurrences, and the Republic of Niger would like to formally address this topic in order to cease these distressing incidents.
The Republic of Niger has had a long history of child marriage with increasing support in accelerating the end of this horrible cycle. As of currently, it is estimated that Niger has a population of 5 million brides. Around 1.9 million of the young girls were married before the adolescent age of 15. UNICEF estimates that 3 in 4 young women of Niger were married before 18 and 1 in 4 prior to turning 15 years of age.
While this promotes economic advancement among the families of these young girls, improved access to educational attainment, and less violence against the women in these young relationships. While there are still many benefits, this is absolutely unsettling as many marriages are forced and unhealthy.
The young, determined Nigeriens of today are partnering the Netherlands, UNICEF, and UNFPA to assist in further advancing these efforts by holding community based sources of protection for these children while also helping women with powerful voices and positions in their society to help by speaking out and help addressing such toxic social norms. With continuing efforts anf further implementations and accesses to such programs, the Republic of Niger can look highly upon bringing a final end to child marriage in the near future.
The Republic of Niger expresses its appreciation for all prior efforts and cooperations with the Netherlands, UNICEF, and UNFPA. In further effort to properly address the considerable issue of child marriage, the Republic of Niger proposes many ideas regarding education and advocacy among the nations of the world. We would like to further invite other impoverished nations struggling with child marriage to join us in this fight and for more economically stable countries to please step in and help by providing financial support and opportunities to provide other impoverished countries similar to Niger to make the effort to finally end child marriage once and for all.
