Selling girls in Lira market: Atrocious barter trade

Girls as young as 15 years are picked from schools by their parents and relatives and are “sold” to prospective husbands at open-air markets in exchange for a few cows and goats as bride price. COURTESY PHOTO

What you need to know:

  • Girls as young as 15 years are picked from schools by their parents and relatives and are “sold” to prospective husbands at open-air markets in exchange for a few cows and goats as bride price.
  • For whatever reasons, such transactions should be condemned and the girls should be treated with the dignity they deserve.

On Wednesday, we reported that girls as young as 15 years are picked from schools by their parents and relatives and are “sold” to prospective husbands at open-air markets in exchange for a few cows and goats as bride price.
Most of the victims are young girls who sat for Primary Leaving Examinations last year. The illicit trade is rife in Aromo Sub-county, and neighbouring sub-counties in Lira District including in the adjacent district of Pader.

In these markets, the girls’ parents reportedly negotiate with the parents of the boys on the number of cows that should be paid as bride price. This is done out of fear that conducting marriage ceremonies at their homes may attract the attention of the local leaders and neighbours that would halt such marriages of underage girls.
So the parents of the girls take their daughters to the local markets where the boy’s parents have gone to transact and after arranging with boy’s parents, the girls are given away to the boy (husband) at the market.
This is stooping too low and debasing humanity. This act is depriving girls of acquiring empowerment through education; they are pulled out of school and mortgaged by parents many times without their consent.

Local leaders say a number of underage girls have been illegally married off by their parents without their knowledge because the giveaway ceremony takes place informally and sometimes they give away their daughters and later they claim that they have gone to visit distant relatives.
If police had been involved in proper community policing, they would have detected such illegal activities and arrested the situation before it escalated. So the reasoning of the officer in charge of Child and Family Protection Unit at Lira Central Police Station that the transactions are very tricky since the selling of the girls is secretive does not hold any water.
For whatever reasons, such transactions should be condemned and the girls should be treated with the dignity they deserve.

This is where government needs to address the endemic problem of poverty facing several communities in the country as this might be one of the reasons parents are selling their daughters in the market as if they were merchandise.