Bas Gul, an Afghan woman who now lives in a shelter, became a child bride at age 11. Photo by Paula Bronstein / Getty Images
Rima was only 13 when, last year, she married a 30-year-old man she'd only just met. It was her safest option: Alone in a refugee camp in Turkey, she'd been raped many times. So Ammar, 30, another Syrian in the camp, offered to wed and look after her, bringing her all the way to Germany to seek asylum.
When they arrived in Germany, however, authorities separated the newlyweds, declaring the union illegitimate since German law requires individuals to be 18 to marry, or 16 if they have parental consent. Rima now lives in a shelter for refugee girls, where she can receive daytime visits from Ammar, the only person she knew coming to Germany.
Child brides like Rima have flocked in record numbers to Germany since last year, when Prime Minister Angela Merkel opened the nation's doors to 1.1 million refugees. About 1,500 married minors have migrated to the country since 2015, Brigit Zeller, a representative of Germany's Youth Welfare Offices, told me.
The influx of young brides presents Germany with a dilemma: whether to protect the girls by separating or preserving these marriages. The girls—predominantly from Syria, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan—come from a wide range of unions. Some wed for protection, like Rima; others were forced to marry; some had arranged marriages in the tradition of their cultures; a small portion married out of love.
The child marriage debate has grown heated this summer, after Germany's current policy—of separating most minor marriages but considering each one individually—led several wedded refugee teens to remain with their husbands.
"The youth offices generally separated people who were supposedly married raped, abused, and beaten," Hoffmann told me. She currently cares for one 15-year-old Syrian girl who desperately wants to be with her 25-year-old husband, whom she wedded in an arranged marriage, and told me other girls have even run away to be with their spouses.
But on the opposite extreme, some youths have run away from their home countries to escape forced marriages. One 17-year-old Somalian girl in the shelter was married at age ten to a 55-year-old man, after having her clitoris removed so she could not enjoy sex. She was her husband's fourth wife.
"The law definitely needs to be changed here," said Hoffmann, adding that her youngest resident was age 11. "Child marriage should be forbidden."
Hoffmann declined to let me interview her residents since they were minors, but one Afghan woman I interviewed outside a refugee shelter in Berlin told me she indeed had no option but to wed at age 15. The woman, Mahdia (whose name has been changed to protect her identity), married a man five years her elder in the town of Baghlan at her grandfather's orders.
"My mother and father were killed by the Taliban when I was a child, because they were teachers at a public school, so to the Taliban they worked for the government," Mahdia, now 25, told me. "I lived with my grandfather and he decided I should marry because my husband had money, a house, a car, and family."
Mahdia said she did not protest because "in Afghanistan, the girls do not choose—the girl belongs to the family." At least one-third of Afghan girls are married by age 18, UNICEF found in a report published this June.
Madhia moved in with her husband's parents, who forbid her from leaving the house, and had her first baby when she was 16. Eventually, Mahdia told me she grew close to her husband and fled with him and their two children to Germany last year.
"I wouldn't leave my husband because my husband is a good man," said Mahdia, who now enjoys the freedom of walking down the street whenever she likes. Her greatest hope, now, is for her nine-year-old daughter in Berlin.
"I want her to be successful," Mahdia said, "so she can decide if she marries."
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