UNICEF Film Night on Child Marriage
Moviemento – Germany’s oldest cinema – in cooperation with the International Team of UNICEF Berlin hosts a UNICEF film night on Child Marriage, screening the movie “Mustang” with an afterward discussion on the situation in Turkey and Germany.
On June 22, at 7:00 p.m., Moviemento cinema will host a UNICEF film night on Child Marriage, co-organized by the International Team UNICEF Berlin. Child marriage is a violation of human rights, but is a reality for both boys and girls. Each year 15 Million girls are forced to marry. Child marriage is widespread and can lead to a lifetime of disadvantage and deprivation. In this film night, we will screen the movie “Mustang” which illustrates the child marriage fate for five teenage sisters. Together with representatives from UNICEF Berlin and Terre des Femmes e.V., the movie will be followed by a discussion on the situation in the film and on Child Marriage in Turkey as well as in Germany.
You are warmly invited to join the event here.
When five orphan girls are seen innocently playing with boys on a beach, their scandalized conservative guardians confine them while forced marriages are arranged. The movie, directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven, is an Academy Award Nominee and has won several prizes at international film festivals as well as six César Awards.
Child Marriage
Child marriage is a violation of human rights, but is a reality for boys and girls, although girls are disproportionately more affected. Worldwide, more than 720 million women alive today were married as children with some 250 million married before 15. Each year 15 Million girls are forced to marry. Child marriage often compromises a girl’s development by resulting in early pregnancy, social isolation, interruption of her schooling, limiting her opportunities for career and vocational advancement and placing her at increased risk of domestic violence. Several factors place a girl at risk of child marriage e.g. poverty, a perception that marriage will provide protection, family honour, social norms, customary or religious laws, an inadequate legislative framework and the state of a country’s civil registration system.
UNICEF aims at empowering girls and women, identifies and addresses some of the systemic and underlying factors that pose a challenge to reproductive health, rights and gender equality. These include economic, structural and social factors. The UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to Accelerate Action to End Child Marriage offers a framework for promoting the right of girls to delay marriage, addressing the conditions that keep the practice in place and caring for girls already in union.
In 2016, UNICEF together with the blog Bridal Musings produced a video clip on child marriage in order to put a spotlight on this grim reality.
#EndChildMarriage
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