Early marriage: how to spot it coming, and who to go to

The first loss is schooling, and it happens within days. A married girl does not come back to class, and once she has been out for a term the practical obstacles to returning stack up quickly, whatever anyone intends.

The second loss is the ability to leave. A girl of fifteen in a husband's home has no money of her own, no trade and often no relatives nearby. If the marriage turns violent, she has very few places to go and very little standing when she gets there.

The third loss is early childbearing, with all the added risk that carries for a young mother and her baby, and years of caring for children before she has learned any way of earning. Families rarely intend any of this. They are usually solving something immediate and not looking at what the next ten years cost.

In the households our teams visit, it is almost never presented as a marriage plan. It is presented as a solution. Fees for the other children, a debt, a death in the family, a father who is sick, a household that suddenly has one less adult earning.

The second common trigger is a pregnancy. A family that discovers a daughter is pregnant may move quickly to marry her to the man responsible, partly out of shame and partly because it looks like the only way to keep the household respectable and provided for.

The third is protection, in the family's own understanding of it. Where a girl is seen as being at risk of a pregnancy that would be worse, marriage can be framed as putting her somewhere safe. Understanding which of these three is in play matters, because you cannot answer a money problem with a lecture, or a shame problem with a threat.

Almost nobody announces it. What you get instead is a run of small changes, and the first of them usually shows on the school register. She stops attending and no reason is given, or a reason is given that does not fit anything else you know. Her name is quietly left off the list when the next term is being planned, in a household that had managed the last three terms.

In the compound the signs are ordinary and easy to dismiss one at a time. A visitor comes and asks after her by name. She is sent to stay with a relative in another village and nobody can say for how long. A household that had no money last month has money this month, and there is no explanation of where it came from. She stops being sent to the places she used to go, and an older woman starts sitting with her alone to talk about how a wife behaves.

The girl herself changes too. She goes quiet, she stops talking about next term, or she says flatly that she will not be at school next year and will not say why. Take that seriously the first time you hear it rather than the third. A teacher or a neighbour who sees two of these signs together should ask, and should ask her alone, rather than waiting until it is certain.

Uganda sets a minimum age for marriage, and marrying or arranging the marriage of a girl below it is unlawful. Sexual activity with a girl below the age of consent is a serious criminal offence regardless of whether a marriage or a bride price is claimed, and calling it a marriage does not make it lawful. Those two things are the reason an official will come when you call one.

That is as far as you need to take it in a compound. A family, a teacher or a girl herself does not have to win an argument about ages and sections, and standing in a courtyard trying to win one is how these cases get lost. What you need is the phone call to the person whose job this is, and the confidence that they have a basis to act on.

So do not quote sections and penalties from memory, and do not open by threatening a family with prison. Ask the probation and social welfare office, a legal aid provider or the police desk to state the position to the household directly. It carries more weight coming from them, and it leaves you as the person that family will still talk to next term.

The nearest useful person is usually the head teacher or a class teacher, because a girl can reach them without explaining herself at home first, and schools have a route to the district education office. If a girl trusts one teacher, that is where this normally starts.

At village level the local council chairperson is the person households recognise and can often speak to a family before anything is formalised. At sub-county and district level there is a community development officer and a probation and social welfare office, and child protection cases sit with them.

The police have a child and family protection desk, and it is the right route where a girl is in immediate danger or has already been taken. Where a case is complicated, ask the community development office who else works on this locally, since organisations offering legal aid and safe accommodation vary by district.

Most cases do not go to a court. What usually happens is that an official visits the household, the plan is stopped or postponed, and an arrangement is made about the girl returning to school. Families often move when they realise the matter is now known outside the home.

That is also where cases quietly fail. Nobody comes back in a month, the pressure returns, and the girl is sent to a relative in another district where none of this is known. A case that is raised and then not followed up can leave a girl worse off than before.

So whoever raises it should agree who checks and when, and should keep checking after the visit has stopped feeling urgent. Ask the school to tell you the moment she stops attending, because attendance is the earliest and clearest signal that an arrangement has restarted.

Be careful in the first days. A family that feels publicly shamed often responds by moving the girl, and a girl who has been moved to an aunt three districts away is very hard to reach. Raise it quietly with the people who need to know and avoid discussing it around the trading centre.

Ask the girl what she thinks will happen if her family finds out she has spoken to someone. Her assessment is normally accurate and it should shape how you proceed. If she is frightened of going home, that is a matter for the police desk or the probation office the same day, not something to sleep on.

Where a relative is willing to have her stay for a period, that is often the most workable short term answer. Make it a named person in a named village with a way to reach her, not a vague arrangement, and make sure someone visits.

The most reliable protection is the ordinary work. A girl who is in school every day, whose fees are not a crisis every term, and who has an adult outside the household she talks to, is much harder to marry off quietly.

Household income does more here than any message. Most of the families who arrange a marriage were solvent enough two years earlier, and a savings group that turns small weekly amounts into a lump sum at the right moment removes the emergency that the marriage was answering.

Talk about it before it is anyone's crisis. A conversation with parents about what they expect for their daughter over the next three years, held in a calm term, is heard very differently from the same conversation held the week a bride price has been discussed.

Start with the girl, not the marriage. Is she safe, does she have any money of her own, does anyone from her family see her, and does she want to leave. Those answers determine everything that follows, and it is worth being honest that some girls will say they want to stay.

If she is pregnant or already has a baby, the immediate priorities are antenatal care and someone checking on her. Our guides on antenatal visits and on village health teams set out what that involves and who visits at home.

Returning to school afterwards is possible and it happens. It needs the same planning as any other return: who holds the baby, which class she can follow, and what the school has agreed. The guide on getting a girl back to school covers that ground, and none of it should wait until she is older, because it gets harder every year.