The Hidden Child Brides of the Syrian Civil War: Vulnerable and Voiceless in Human Rights Law and Practice

This book provides a comprehensive account of one significantly underreported aspect of violence affecting young refugee girls today, that of forced child marriage. It examines the ongoing, insidious practice via the lens of international human rights laws and contextualising human rights laws and discourses in relation to Middle Eastern, Islamic, and Jordanian understandings of international law and human rights, where the practice in directly impacting young Syrian refugee girls who are seeking refuge in Jordan with their displaced families.
The book finds that in a juxtaposition of human rights definitions and obligations, between the traditional and modern, the religious and the secular, there are mixed implications for the realisation of universal human rights and that this has consequences for the most vulnerable―child refugees. As a result, Syrian children exist in a precarious situation. They are living in a foreign state with an unclear legal status, are largely unidentified, and, in effect, stateless. It is in this liminal space that Syrian children are vulnerable and voiceless and highly exposed to forced marriages and the resultant violence and possibly death.

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