You are here

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

Research
Making sense of child, early and forced marriage among Syrian refugee girls: a mixed methods study in Lebanon
  1. Susan Andrea Bartels1,
  2. Saja Michael2,
  3. Sophie Roupetz3,
  4. Stephanie Garbern4,
  5. Lama Kilzar2,
  6. Harveen Bergquist5,
  7. Nour Bakhache6,
  8. Colleen Davison6,
  9. Annie Bunting7
  1. 1 Department of Emergency Medicine, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
  2. 2 ABAAD Resource Center for Gender Equality, Beirut, Lebanon
  3. 3 Department of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
  4. 4 Department of Emergency Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Milton, Milton, Massachusetts, USA
  5. 5 Department of Emergency Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
  6. 6 Department of Public Health Sciences, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
  7. 7 Department of Social Science, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  1. Correspondence to Dr Susan Andrea Bartels; susanabartels{at}gmail.com

Abstract

Introduction The Syrian conflict has resulted in over 2.3 million child refugees in the Middle East and the prevalence of early marriage has reportedly increased among displaced Syrian families. This study explores the underlying factors contributing to child marriage among Syrian refugees in Lebanon with the goal of informing community-based strategies to address the issue.

Methods In July–August 2016, trained interviewers collected self-interpreted stories in Lebanon using Cognitive Edge’s SenseMaker, a mixed-method data collection tool. Participants included married and unmarried Syrian girls, Syrian parents as well as married and unmarried men. Each participant shared a story about the experiences of Syrian girls and then interpreted the story by plotting their perspectives on a variety of questions. Patterns in the responses were analysed in SPSS and the accompanying qualitative narratives were reviewed to facilitate interpretation of the quantitative results.

Results 1422 self-interpreted stories from 1346 unique participants were collected with 40% of shared stories focused on (n=332) or mentioning (n=245) child marriage. Quantitative data summarised the different perspectives of female and male participants. Syrian girls and mothers were more likely to share stories about protection/security and/or education and were more likely to report that girls were overprotected. Male participants were more likely to share stories about financial security as well as sexual exploitation of girls and more often reported that girls were not protected enough. Despite these gendered perspectives, many of the shared narratives highlighted similar themes of financial hardship, lack of educational opportunities and safety concerns around sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).

Conclusions A complex myriad of factors contribute to early marriage including poverty, lack of educational opportunities and concerns about SGBV. Sexual exploitation under the guise of marriage is a reality for some Syrian girls. Gender-specific strategies to address child marriage might be more effective in reducing this harmful practice.

  • child
  • early or forced marriage
  • girls
  • Lebanon
  • mixed methods
  • refugee
  • Syria

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2017-000509

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Handling editor Stephanie M Topp

    • Contributors SAB, CD, SM and AB conceived of the study idea. SAB designed the survey with input from NB, AB, CD, SG and SM. NB, CD, SM and SAB conducted the pilot testing. SM and LK directed field implementation and oversaw recruitment of interviewers and team leads. NB, SAB and CD designed interviewer training with SM, SAB and SG leading the training. SR, HB and NB assisted in quality control during data collection. Analysis was done by SAB. SAB drafted the initial manuscript with all authors contributing to writing. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

    • Funding Sexual Violence Research Initiative and the World Bank Group’s Development Marketplace for innovation on GBV prevention (in Memory of Hannah Graham).

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Ethics approval Queen’s University Health Sciences and Affiliated Teaching Hospitals Research Ethics Board.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement Data available by request to authors.