DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Majda was destitute. Her husband and eldest son had been killed by Israeli airstrikes. Living in a ragged tent in Gaza with rats and the stench of sewage, she couldn’t support her children and feared her daughters would be harassed going to the communal latrine in a camp with hundreds of strangers.So she made a decision she now deeply regrets. She married off her 13- and 14-year-old daughters to men who promised safety and support.“I thought I was protecting them,” she said. “Fear was slaughtering me.” The devastation that Israel’s campaign has wreaked in Gaza has helped fuel an increase in marriages of young girls, according to experts and official data. With almost the entire population driven from their homes, most living in squalid camps and dependent on aid, some parents have sought some financial stability for their teen daughters by giving them away in marriage.
For the girls, it meant a loss of their childhood and future — and, often, dangerous pregnancies.For Majda’s daughters, it meant horrific physical abuse.
Child marriage was declining before the war Before the war, child marriage had been slowly declining in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. In 2022, the last tally released by the bureau, 17.8% of marriages involved a girl under the age of 18, down from more than 22% in 2015.The minimum legal age for marriage in Gaza is 17, with some exceptions allowed; the U.N. and most humanitarian groups categorize marriages of girls under 18 as early marriage.
