G. is 16 years old and was married at the age of 3 to a 40 year old widower. Now over 50, he is demanding that she goes to his home to start married life. Her family is poor and her husband's family, as landowners, are wealthy by village standards. She has only seen this man once, and remembers he looks like a fat old man with a white moustache.

Village tradition dictates that when an elderly member of the family dies, unmarried girls in the family are married off. In this situation the girl's family does not have to pay a dowry for their daughters, making it a further incentive to arrange weddings at this time. So after the death of her grandmother, G., her sister and 8 other couples where married off on the day of the funeral in order to save money.

G.'s mother is 36 years old and illiterate. She was married at the age of 5, started married life at 11 and had her first child by the age of 12. In all she bore 5 children, 4 girls and 1 boy. G. is the youngest in the family. Her father was an opium smuggler, but now works as a labourer on other peoples' land. Her sisters are illiterate, only her brother and herself are studying. She wants to continue her studies and become a teacher. Her father has promised her that if she gets a job she will not have to go live with her husband. If she were to join her husband now and he were to die, she would become a slave in the family and have no future.

When asked if she would marry her own daughters at a very young age, she said that she would never allow it and that girls should start married life only at 18.

The Veerni project wants to help G. to realize her dreams of becoming a teacher and escaping a marriage she does not want. Her marriage was illegal, and although the law forbidding such marriages was passed in 1939, this practice continues even today. However the government does little to stop child marriages.

Please help G. to exercise her human rights.