Behold,my sister didn’t have a chance to stop what was happening to her.
Memory Banda, 20, reflects on the moment her 11-year-old sister was forced to marry before she even knew the true meaning of love or had entered adulthood.
Ms Banda watched her little sister become a child bride, and she remembers thinking it was normal.
She was forced into the marriage at just 11-years-old because the man got her pregnant.
“I quickly realised the devastating impact it had on her when she was further abused in marriage,” Ms Banda said.
When she came home, I saw the person who had been my little sister wasn’t my little sister any more.
Ms Banda said her sister suffered as a child bride, as do half the young women in Malawi, including some children as young as 10.
Ms Banda has since been campaigning against child marriage in the country to make sure other girls don’t end up like her sister.
In 2015, Malawi had the ninth highest rate of child marriage in the world and in that same year, the country ruled a woman could not get married until she was 18. However a loophole meant a child could get married at 16 if she had her parents’ permission.
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