Girls as young as 12 have “disappeared” from their classroom after being married to older men, according to educators who have reached out to the Women’s Rights Foundation.
Its founder, Lara Dimitrijevic said a number of educators had reached out to inform the foundation that girls, “even as young as 12 are disappearing from their classrooms and then turning up weeks later saying that they are married to much older men or not ever showing up at all”.
Commissioner for Children Antoinette Vassallo said concerns about child marriage had been raised with her office “by professionals”.
Child, early and forced marriage has been a concern of the office for a number of years- Children's Commissioner Antoinette Vassallo
The numbers are not known but the voices of Dimitrijevic and Vassallo continue to confirm that child marriage is an undocumented reality in Malta.
Earlier this week, several people who work in the social care and education sector said they knew of cases of teenagers not turning up at school and their friends telling the teacher that they were on their honeymoon.
The former president of Malta, Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, recently spoke about the need to blow the cover of what she called a hidden reality.
And a Maltese author with Palestinian-Jordanian roots, Walid Nabhan, wrote on Facebook: “In my street, girls aged 14 and 15 have been married! I thought of contacting the media to ask who is marrying these children?”
This cultural phenomenon has also been confirmed by Mary Muscat, a lawyer and former police inspector, who said she was unsurprised by the news. She said she had encountered a case of child marriage as a child advocate.
Coleiro Preca called on the authorities to dig deeper into the matter, a call echoed by the children’s commissioner.
'Protect victims, prosecute perpetrators'
“Child, early and forced marriage has been a concern of the office for a number of years and it has continually advocated for adequate protection of children,” Vassallo said.
“Even though there are measures in place to protect children, stronger efforts should be made to raise awareness of the harmful effects of CEFM, to enhance the training of professionals and other key persons as well as to improve mechanisms and procedures to better identify children at risk.
“Efforts should also be made to identify, refer, protect and support victims. Perpetrators should be promptly prosecuted.”
Under Maltese law, one has to be 18 to get married but a 16 or 17-year-old may contract marriage if the parents consent or if authorised to do so by the courts.
In 2019, the United Nations’ Committee for the Rights of the Child recommended that Malta’s marriage law should be amended to forbid people under 18 from getting married.
Vassallo said her office had always advocated that the legal marriage age be raised to 18 “specifically to prevent children from being promised for arranged marriages by their parents”.
The police received two reports of alleged child marriages in 2020. One resulted in an attempted forced marriage of a minor, the other was investigated but allegations of a forced marriage did not result. However, court action was initiated in connection with defilement. Both cases are still pending.
The first case mentioned by the police refers to that of a teenage girl who has been missing for several weeks. Times of Malta revealed how, two years ago, she had told the police that her father tried to force her into an arranged marriage.
The father, a foreign national, was eventually arraigned and charged with beating his then 15-year-old daughter and trying to make her marry against her will. The court case started in July 2020 and is still pending.
Since the report, the girl, now 17, has been under a temporary care order pending the court case. She was living in a residential home when she went missing a few weeks ago.