At the urban settlement camp in Mafraq, 80 kilometres north of Amman, I am told by Rev Nour Sahawneh of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church, which provides support for the Syrian refugees in the community, that most of the female refugees living there were married at 14 or 15 and are illiterate.

Polygamy as well as child marriage is common in rural Syria. In Mafraq I visit a family who fled Aleppo a year ago after their house was destroyed. The conditions in which they live are appalling. Sabine (not her real name) is 26 years old but her face and demeanour make her look much older. She has been married for seven years and has two children, aged one and two. She also helps look after the seven children her husband has with his first wife, whom he married when she was 14. "I wish I had my own house with my two children nearby," says Sabine. "But there is no money. It hurts my heart living like this, but I have no choice." 

Sabine cries as she shows me the kitchen in which meals are prepared for three adults and nine children. Damp penetrates the walls. There are two rooms and a washroom with a cold tap. One of the children is profoundly disabled. I learn that the first wife is pregnant again. "One of us gets pregnant at the beginning of the year and the other at the end," Sabine says.

I travel to Lebanon to meet with aid workers and refugees from Syria to discover whether the situation for women is any different from those in Jordan. At the Danish Refugee Council offices in Zahle, project manager Ziad Kmeid tells me "it is known" that Syrian men are abusing both Syrian and Lebanese women and girls, and that child marriage is a problem. Kmeid admits that there are cases of Syrian girls being sold into marriage and prostitution at the border and taken to Saudi Arabia and other countries. Nothing so far has been done to stop this criminal activity.