Abigail R. Esman
Reprinted from The Investigative Project on Terrorism.
While the West debates the humanitarian problem of Syrian refugees flooding across its borders, the discussions repeatedly turn to the dangers they might pose: what if there are terrorists among them? How can we be sure? How can we save those in need of saving and still be safe ourselves?
Yet for many of these refugees, married off against their will, the terror has already begun. They are 11 and 13 and 14 years old. Some of them are pregnant. Some are already mothers at 14. Their husbands are 25 or 38 or 40. And there is no escape.
"Child marriage existed in Syria before the start of the conflict," reports Girls Not Brides, a global partnership aimed at ending child marriage worldwide, "but the onset of war and the mass displacement of millions of refugees has led to a dramatic rise in the number of girls married as children."
Indeed, since the start of the refugee crisis, UNICEF reports, as many as "one-third of registered marriages among Syrian refugees in Jordan between January and March 2014 involved girls under 18," with some as young as 11.
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