An 18-year-old girl from Muktikot village of Sappata region in ward 1 of Swamikartik Khapar Rural Municipality got married two years ago. A grade 10 student at the time, she quit her studies and soon became a mother. Her daughter is now nine months old.

In Mutikot village, several young girls below the age of 20 are already mothers.

The 18-year-old’s neighbour, a 19-year-old girl, has an eight-month-old baby who is currently ill. The young mother is worried sick about her child as she does not know what ails her infant.

Most young boys and girls of Muktikot drop out of school before grade 10 and get married. By the time they reach their early 20s, they are parents to at least two children.

Dil Bahadur Rokaya, a teacher at Raghumata Secondary School in Sappata, said underage marriage is a decades-old problem in Sappata and it does not show any signs of abating.

“Since mid-April 2023, four female students studying in grades eight, nine, and ten have dropped out of school after getting married,” said Rokaya. “While most girls who get married early stop coming to school as they get busy with household work and familial life, the boys start looking for ways to earn money to support their new family.”

According to the 19-year-old young mother, there are 255 Dalit families in Muktikot of Sappata and most of the young people in the families are already married. “There is not a single family who can depend on their agricultural output to see them through the year. So our husbands leave the village to look for jobs to support us,” she said. Her 20-year-old husband went to India for employment last November.

It is customary for young married boys of Musikot to go to India looking for jobs as there are no income-generating opportunities in the village. Paucity of arable land also makes it difficult for the families to survive on farming.

Early marriage and teen pregnancies have had adverse effects on the health of young mothers, says Mala Shahi, auxiliary nursing midwife of Muktikot Basic Health Centre. Women in Muktikot are facing several health problems such as anaemia, asthma, organ failure, and uterine diseases, among others.

“Young women age rapidly due to their poor health and lack of nutritious food during and after pregnancy,” she said. “They also refuse to visit the health post even if they are suffering from health issues. It’s the lack of awareness that keeps them away. They think it is normal practice to marry young and have children soon after. They do not think about the repercussions on their health.”

However, when a free health camp was set up in the rural municipality last September, 864 women from Muktikot came for checkup.

Bhakta Kaila, senior auxiliary health worker of the health unit of the Swamikartik Khapar Rural Municipality, said, “Of all the women who came for checkup from Muktikot, 435 were suffering from serious illnesses. Most were ailing from uterine prolapse, vaginal bleeding, vaginal discharge, and asthma.”

The specialist doctors at the camp concluded that most health issues faced by the women of Muktikot were due to early marriage, teen pregnancy, frequent pregnancies, poor nutrition, and insufficient rest during and after pregnancy.

Ajaya BK, chairman of ward 1 of Swamikartik Khapar Rural Municipality, said that after men leave the village to earn money, the women work day and night to take care of family members.

According to the data of a ‘smart survey’ conducted by the Health Directorate, Sudurpaschim Province on 467 children between the ages of six to 59 months from nine local units in Bajura in the last fiscal year, 48.8 percent were stunted, 30.6 percent were underweight, and 8.6 percent were suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

DN Giri, data management officer at the directorate, said that 51.2 percent of children in Swamikartik Khapar Rural Municipality are underweight, which is the highest among local units in the district. The national prevalence of underweight infants during birth is 12 percent. Similarly, the number in Sudurpaschim stands at 20 percent.

“The directorate has made plans to reduce the number of underweight children to 1.4 percent by 2030, but it will be very difficult to achieve that goal in remote areas such as Swamikartik Khapar,” said Giri.

The study revealed that 55.8 percent of children in Swamikartik Khapar were stunted, 51.2 percent were underweight, and 11.6 percent had severe acute malnutrition.

According to Gyanendra Dawadi, province coordinator of the Multi Sector Nutrition Plan (MSNP), among the nine local units of Bajura, children of Swamikartik Khapar Rural Municipality, Jagannath Rural Municipality, and Himali Rural Municipalities—in the northeast region of the district—are highly affected by malnutrition.

“In Muktikot of Sappata, most women with poor economic conditions give birth at a young age and have many children. They do not seek treatment in health institutions in times of need, and do not get enough rest during and after pregnancy,” said Dawadi.

Ajay BK, ward chair of ward 1 of Swamikartik Khapar Rural Municipality, said their efforts to control child marriage have not been successful due to deep-rooted traditions.

“In one year, we separated 12 teenage couples who were married and living together, but the parents did not agree with our decision,” said BK. “Also, the 12 girls were pregnant so we did not take action against their underage marriage,” said Ajay.

According to the District Health Office, Bajura, in the fiscal year 2022-2023, out of the total 3,061 deliveries in the district, 435 were under 20 years of age.

The National Census 2021 puts the number of married women and men in Bajura at 69,098 and, among them, 49,810 got married before the age of 20. Among the underage marriages, 30,627 were women and 19,183 men.

The law bars marriage before the age of 20. But in most rural communities in the northeast region of Bajura, including Swamikartik Khapar's Sappata, where child marriage is common, women and men do not register their marriages.

According to ward chair Ajay BK, most underage married couples do not even have citizenship certificates.

“For newborns, birth registration is mandatory to get child support allowance, scholarships, and other financial assistance provided by the government. Most underage parents do not register the births of the child to avoid legal hassles,” said BK. “Some doctor their documents to increase their legal age.”

The Constitution of Nepal has guaranteed children’s fundamental right to be protected from violence, abuse, trafficking, and early and forced marriages. Article 39 Clause (5) states that no child shall be subjected to child marriage, transported illegally, kidnapped, or taken hostage. These actions are punishable under federal law.

Children who are victims of such actions have been guaranteed the right to receive compensation from the perpetrators, including their parents, according to the law. But the reality in places like remote Swamikartik Khapar’s Sappata is quite different.

Controlling early marriages and teen pregnancies is getting increasingly hard in Himali Rural Municipality too as the parents themselves encourage their wards to marry young, says Govinda Bahadur Malla, the rural municipality chairman.

“Compared to the past couple of years, the practice of child marriage has decreased. But in the rural areas where people stick to age-old customs, it has not gone down,” said Malla.

Bharat Bahadur Rokaya, chairman of Swamikartik Khapar Rural Municipality, said that in remote areas, especially in poor families where there is a shortage of food and other resources, girls are seen as a liability, so the parents marry them off at an early age.

“We have for long been conducting awareness campaigns to control child marriage, but have not been very successful. Currently, we are planning to get help from the police to increase public awareness and inform people that child marriage is a punishable crime,” said Rokaya.