Children exported as brides

By Trudy Harris
August 02, 2005

AUSTRALIAN girls as young as 14 have been flown overseas and forced to marry older men in an attempt by their families to protect them from promiscuity and Western influences at home.The Australian embassy in Beirut has been approached by 12 women in the past two years - seven of them minors - seeking help to return to Australia to escape arranged marriages.

Diplomats met Islamic clerics and Arabic community leaders in Sydney and Melbourne last year asking for their help to prevent women being taken abroad to marry against their will, The Australian has learned.

Australian ambassador in Lebanon Stephanie Shwabsky said women were arriving at the embassy seeking help to return to Australia after fleeing their new husbands.
"The cases that come to our attention are very serious," Ms Shwabsky said. "The young people involved are very upset and want our assistance and protection."

In one case, a 14-year-old girl arrived alone at the embassy seeking consular assistance, saying she had effectively been imprisoned in the home of a man she had been forced to marry by her father, who had taken her to Lebanon promising her a holiday.

Consular staff made contact with her mother in Australia and organised her flight home.
Ms Shwabsky said it appeared that many of the teenagers were unaware they were going to be married when they travelled to Lebanon, where the legal age for marriage is 16.

In most cases, the teenagers are married into families in northern Lebanon, were such marriage traditions are still strong.

Australia's most prominent Islamic cleric, Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, said he had heard about girls who had been taken to Lebanon for arranged marriages, a practice he condemned as "unfair for the children" and against religious teaching.

"It's against Islam," he said. "This is cultural thinking, not religious. "They (the parents) want her (their daughter) to be safe, and to bring the families closer together, but these marriages are not true and are unfair for the children."

He also expressed concern about marriages of convenience by overseas husbands wanting to live in Australia. He said Australian women of all ages were travelling to Lebanon so they could marry, but some men consented only so they could emigrate to Australia. The husband would then divorce his wife after living with her for two years and qualifying for a permanent resident's visa. Ms Shwabsky has written to Arabic media in Australia warning against forced marriages and meets regularly with religious leaders and politicians in Lebanon who oppose the practice.

"The communities that have the highest number of these cases, I have spoken both publicly and privately with opinion-makers and local and senior clergy, including the chief judge of the Sunni Court in Tripoli," she said.

"In addition, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra has also spoken to religious and community leaders." She said the embassy worked with local government, legal officials and families to help the victims fly home to Australia.

While teenagers rarely married before the Australian legal age of 18, many were facing pressure to get engaged as early as possible to avoid losing their religious and cultural identities and to protect themselves from Western lifestyles, including sex before marriage.

"My cousin got married at 17 to a man around 28 years old," one teenage girl said. "She completed half of Year 11 and now she's having a baby. She always tells me that I am wasting my time studying."

Rather than refuse, girls were eager to find a husband in their communities that placed the highest value on marriage and raising a family, welfare workers said. Others obliged because they felt unable to integrate into a society they think distrusts Muslims in the wake of the war on terrorism.

The welfare workers fear these girls are reducing their employment options and financial independence and isolating themselves from mainstream society. They stress many arranged marriages are loving and successful but question whether young teenagers fully understand the responsibilities.

"Because of the ongoing tensions after September 11, rightly or wrongly they think that whatever chances they had of integration prior to September 11 don't exist now," Islamic Women's Welfare Council of Victoria manager Joumanah El Matrah said.

"And it's not a sense of blame or anger, it's being pragmatic. They are going to just live quietly and exist on the fringes. It's quite bleak."

The council has repeatedly approached the Victorian Government for funding to address the issue, involving possibly several hundred girls, but have so far been refused.

"It's just like a black hole," Ms El Matrah said. "You put your concerns forward and (government officials) are sympathetic but nothing evolves."

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