Female genital mutilation (FGM) traditional surgeon in Kapchorwa, Uganda speaking to a reporter. The women in this area are being trained by civil society organisation REACH in how to educate people to stop the practice. Credit: Joshua Kyalimpa/IPS

By Julia Hotz
WASHINGTON, Jul 23 2014 (IPS)

As Tuesday’s major summits here and in London focused global attention on adolescent girls, the United Nations offered new data warning that more than 130 million girls and women have experienced some form of female genital mutilation, while more than 700 million women alive today were forced into marriage as children.

Noting how such issues disproportionately affect women in Africa and the Middle East, the new report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) surveyed 29 countries and discussed the long-term consequences of both female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage.“What we’re really missing is a coordinated global effort that is commensurate with the scale and the size of the issue.” -- Ann Warner

While the report links the former practice with “prolonged bleeding, infection, infertility and death,” it mentions how the latter can predispose women to domestic violence and dropping out of school.

“The numbers tell us we must accelerate our efforts. And let’s not forget that these numbers represent real lives,” UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said in a statement. “While these are problems of a global scale, the solutions must be local, driven by communities, families and girls themselves to change mindsets and break the cycles that perpetuate [FGM] and child marriage.”

Despite these ongoing problems, Tuesday’s internationally recognised Girl Summit comes as the profile of adolescent girls – and, particularly, FGM – has risen to the top of certain agendas. On Tuesday, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced a legislative change that will now make it a legally enforceable parental responsibility to prevent FGM.

“We’ve reached an all-time high for both political awareness and political will to change the lives of women around the world,” Ann Warner, a senior gender and youth specialist at the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW), a research institute here, told IPS.

Warner recently co-authored a policy brief recommending that girls be given access to high-quality education, support networks, and practical preventative skills, and that communities provide economic incentives, launch informational campaigns, and establish a legal minimum age for marriage.

Speaking Tuesday at the Washington summit, Warner added that there has been “a good amount of promising initiatives – initiated by NGOs, government ministers and grassroots from around the world – that have been successful in turning the tide on the issue and changing attitudes, knowledge and practices.”

Advocates around the world can learn from these efforts, Warner said, paying particular attention to the progress India has made in preventing child marriage. Still, she believes that a comprehensive global response is necessary.

“What we’re really missing is a coordinated global effort that is commensurate with the scale and the size of the issue” of FGM and child marriage, she said. “With 14 million girls married each year, a handful of individual projects around the world are simply not enough to make a dent in that problem.”

U.S. action

The need for better coordination and accountability was echoed by Lyric Thompson, co-chair of the Girls Not Brides-USA coalition, a foundation that co-sponsored Tuesday’s Girl Summit here in Washington.

“If we are going to end child marriage in a generation, as the Girl Summit charter challenges us to do, that is going to mean a much more robust effort than what is currently happening,” Thompson told IPS. “A few small programmes, no matter how effective, will not end the practice.”

In particular, Thompson is calling on the United States to take a more active stand against harmful practices that affect women globally, which she adds is consistent with the U.S Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013

“If America is serious about ending this practice in a generation, this means not just speeches and a handful of [foreign aid] programmes, but also the hard work of ensuring that American diplomats are negotiating with their counterparts in countries where the practice is widespread,” she says.

“It also means being directly involved in difficult U.N. negotiations, including the ones now determining the post-2015 development agenda, to ensure a target on ending child, early and forced marriage is included under a gender equality goal.”

On Tuesday, the U.S. government announced nearly five million dollars to counter child and forced marriage in seven developing countries for this year, while pledging to work on new U.S. legislation on the issue next year. (The U.S. has also released new information on its response to FGM and child marriage.)

“​We know the fight against child marriage is the fight against extreme poverty,” Rajiv Shah, the head of the United States’ main foreign aid agency, stated Tuesday.

“That’s why USAID has put women and girls at the centre of our efforts to answer President Obama’s call to end extreme poverty in two generations. It’s a commitment that reflects a legacy of investment in girls – in their education, in their safety, in their health, and in their potential.”

Global ‘tipping point’

Of course, civil society actors around the world likely hold the key to changing long-held social views around these contentious issues.

“Federal agencies, in a position to respond to forced marriage cases, must work together and with community and NGO partners to ensure thoughtful and coordinated policy development,” Archi Pyati, director of public oolicy at Tahirih Justice Center, a Washington-based legal advocacy organisation, told IPS.

“Teachers, counsellors, doctors, nurses and others who are in a position to help a girl or woman to avoid a forced marriage or leave one must be informed and ready to respond.”

Pyati points to an awareness-raising campaign around forced marriage that will tour the United States starting in September. In this, social media is also becoming an increasingly important tool for advocacy efforts.

“Technology has brought us a new way to tell our governments and our corporations what matters to us,” Emma Wade, counsellor of the Foreign and Security Policy Group at the British Embassy here, told IPS. “Governments do take notice of what’s trending on Twitter and the like, and corporations are ever-mindful of ways to differentiate themselves … in the search for market share and committed customers.”

Wade noted within her presentation at Tuesday’s summit that individuals can pledge their support for “a future free from FGM and child and forced marriage” via the digital Girl Summit Pledge.

Shelby Quast, policy director of Equality Now, an international human rights organisation based in Nairobi, reiterated the importance of tackling FGM and child marriage across a variety of domains.

“The approach that works best is multi–sectoral… including the law, education, child protection and other elements such as support for FGM survivors and media advocacy strategies,” Quast explained. “We are at a tipping point globally, so let’s keep the momentum up to ensure all girls at risk are protected.”

A moment of silence in held in Washington, DC May 6th for the 234 missing Nigerian school girls who were abducted by Boko Haram on Apr. 14. Credit: Senate Democrats/cc by 2.0

By Michelle Tullo
WASHINGTON, May 15 2014 (IPS)

Amidst intensifying concern over the fate of more than 200 girls abducted by a radical Islamist group in northern Nigeria, at least 100 representatives of various activist groups Tuesday pressed the U.S. Senate to approve legislation designed to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls and discourage child marriages around the world.

Introduced by a bipartisan group of senators last week, the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) would use existing foreign aid to achieve the bill’s major aims and mandate greater coordination of existing U.S. government programmes that address gender-based violence.A 10 percent reduction in child marriages could lead to a 70 percent reduction in infant mortality, according to the activist group Girls Not Brides.

“If passed, it would mean there would be enduring legislation and policy in place by the U.S. government towards violence against women that would not be based on the politics of any particular administration,” Jacqueline Hart, vice president for strategic learning, research, and evaluation at American Jewish World Service (AJWS), told IPS.

AJWS, an international development and human rights group, helped organise the activist lobbying.

IVAWA is no stranger on the Hill; its previous version was shelved as a result of right-wing Republican concerns that it could be used to support abortions and other women’s reproductive rights. The latest version was introduced in the House of Representatives late last year, where it was referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Gender-based violence is one of the world’s most prevalent human rights abuses, and has one of the greatest degrees of impunity surrounding it, according to the activist groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

At least one in three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime, according to U.N. Women.

“This Act makes ending violence against women and girls a top diplomatic priority,” Republican Sen. Susan Collins, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said in a press statement.

“The world has just seen an appalling example of women and girls being treated as property and political bargaining chips in Nigeria, where the terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped nearly 300 school girls and is threatening to sell them into slavery and forced marriages.

“Sadly, this is not a viewpoint limited to terrorist leaders: the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) says one in nine girls around the world is married before the age of 15, a harmful practice that deprives girls of their dignity and often their education, increases their health risks, and perpetuates poverty.”

Child brides in rural Senegal at work. Marriage before the age of 18 is a generally common practice in Senegal, with 16 percent of young women getting married and give birth before reaching 15. Credit: Issa Sikiti da Silva/IPS

Indeed, in addition to supporting programmes designed to support national legislation criminalising violence and abuse of girls and women, to provide training to police, prosecutors, and judges to handle such cases, and expand health facilities for women and girls, the bill would support projects aimed at offering girls and women more choices in life, particularly in education and economic opportunity, particularly in countries where early marriage is commonly practiced.

About 14 million girls are married before the age of 18 every year, according to Girls Not Brides. The largest proportion of early marriages occurs in Africa’s Sahel region.

In Niger, some 75 percent of girls are married early, followed by the Central African Republic and Chad. Early marriages occur in every region of the world, with the largest number in India.

According to UNIFEM, 64 million girls are child brides worldwide.

Early marriages inflict abuse on girls and women in many ways, from sexual violence to poor health.

They also increase the chance of physical or sexual abuse in a relationship. In Ethiopia, 81 percent of child brides describe their first physical experience as forced.

The issue is also tied to development. A 10 percent reduction in child marriages could lead to a 70 percent reduction in infant mortality, according to the activist group Girls Not Brides.

The lobbying day on Capitol Hill followed a policy summit hosted Monday by AJWS that featured new research on early marriage undertaken by Nirantar, an Indian feminist resource group.

The research, not yet formally published, focuses less on the appropriate age for marriage than on the role played by the institution of marriage in India’s social structure.

“When we talk about early marriage, it is always the early part we talk about, but what about the marriage part?” asked Archana Dwivedi, deputy director of Nirantar. “What is magic about the age 18?

“We often used child marriage as synonymous for forced marriage, but that is not the case,” she told IPS. “All marriages under 18 are not forced, and all marriages above 18 are not chosen. Imagine a gay boy married to a girl or a lesbian girl married to a man? It can be equally, if not more traumatic, because marriage is also license to have sex.”

Focusing on the age of 18 also diverts attention from girls over 18 who are still suffering the consequences of marrying young, she said. Although often overlooked, these consequences extend beyond the physical health of the women.

“There is too much focus on maternal health, which reinforces the patriarchal thinking that women are there to reproduce healthy children….What about her mental health, how she feels? After marriage, all the opportunities in her life are a given…there is nothing left in life to dream of or desire.”

Dwivedi argued that organisations working to end child marriages need to apply different indicators in assessing the effectiveness of their work.

While many organisations report how many early marriages they helped prevent or delay, they often fail to address the necessity of changing social and cultural attitudes about early marriage, as well as the institution itself.

Acceptance of conventional explanations for early marriage, such as blaming it on poverty, is unlikely to change long-prevalent attitudes.

Focusing on expectations surrounding marriage itself, on the other hand, will more likely lead to a broader range of choices for girls and women and thus empower them.

“Even in urban upper class families, a parent will spend half the family’s money on the education of the son and half on the marriage of the daughter,” she said.

“The attitude is that parents think marriage is the only viable solution for girls…Parents are working with the best intentions to help get their child settled, not doing it to ruin their lives, but to stabilise them. But there’s something wrong with our idea of stability.”

Child brides in rural Senegal at work. Marriage before the age of 18 is a generally common practice in Senegal. Credit: Issa Sikiti da Silva/IPS

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, Aug 1 2013 (IPS)

Advocacy groups are urging for partnerships between governmental organisations and private sector businesses to better prevent child marriage and combat the economic, development and health problems it causes.

A recently released report by Rachel Vogelstein, a fellow at the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the non-partisan think tank Council on Foreign Relations, highlights strategic and moral reasons for U.S. involvement in the issue.

“Child marriages are a form of gender-based violence,” said Vogelstein at a discussion on her study on Wednesday. “It curtails education for young girls, which in turn stifles their economic progress.”

According to the United Nations, in 2011 almost 70 million women—or one in three women between the ages of 20 and 24—had been married under the age of 18. In South Asia, 46 percent of women aged 20 to 24 were married before 18 and 18 percent were married by age 15. India accounts for 40 percent of all child marriages worldwide.

“This is often just seen as the norm in many countries. That’s just how life has been,” Lakshmi Sundaram, global coordinator of a London-based advocacy group, Girls Not Brides, told IPS."Marrying your daughter off means you have one less mouth to feed."
-- Lakshmi Sundaram

He pointed to economic reasons for early marriages, noting, “In most countries there are dowry systems in place, and marrying your daughter off means you have one less mouth to feed.”

The majority of the 25 countries with the highest child marriage rates have fragile governments or face a high risk of natural disaster, such as Syria, Afghanistan and Niger. In Syrian refugee camps, there is evidence that girls are married off at a very young age.

“Marriage is viewed almost as a form of security,” Sundaram told IPS. “In places where there is insecurity or conflict, parents may actually feel the best thing they can do for their daughter is marry her off because they believe she will be safe.”

In actuality, the opposite is true. Girls married as teenagers in India reported three times as many incidences of rape than girls married as adults. Ninety-five percent of those girls did not know their husbands prior to marriage and 81 percent said their first sexual experience was forced, Vogelstein said during Wednesday’s talk.

According to the study, brides aged 15 to 19 are twice as likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth than brides in their twenties, while the baby of a teenage bride is 60 percent more likely to die in its first year than the child of a mother in her twenties.

“The marriages often have very strong power dynamics, which are controlled usually by the much older husbands,” Sundaram told IPS. “The girls are under huge pressure to prove their fertility, so they often become pregnant very young and very often.”

Tough solutions

All but four countries have a minimum age of legal marriage, ranging from 15 to 18. Several countries have a provision allowing younger children to be married with the consent of the parent.

According to the director of gender, population and development at the International Centre for Research on Women, Suzanne Petroni, such a provision makes preventing child marriage a difficult task.

“In the majority of these countries, you can get the consent of parents. They are the ones making the decision to have the daughter married off,” Petroni told IPS. “In most cases, it is not her decision at all.”

According to the study, in several countries the implementation of child marriage laws are violently resisted, leading several advocacy groups to suggest trying to change the culture of these societies rather than changing laws. Because many countries do not have a birth or marriage registrar set up, proving a girl is too young to be married, or is even married at all, is a challenge.

A strategic move

According to the study, eliminating child marriages offers economic and developmental benefits to both individual countries and the United States.

“The United States spends billions of dollars to reduce maternal child mortality, prevent the transmission of HIV, improve education attainment, stimulate economic growth, and promote the rule of law, and has vital interest in the stability of many countries where child marriage is pervasive,” stated the study.

The United States has typically combatted child marriage through smaller scale developmental efforts. In 2012, the Department of State required reporting on child marriage in its annual country reports on human rights practises. In March, as part of the Violence Against Women Act, Congress mandated that the United States develop a strategy to prevent child marriage globally.

The study called for the U.S. government to acknowledge that child marriage is a barrier to security and to encourage the efforts of other countries to tackle this issue internally.

“The U.S. government had adopted a recognition that reducing gaps that exist between men and women, and empowering women to lead, [are] the central core to effective development,” said Caren Grown, the senior coordinator of gender equality and women’s empowerment at the governmental organisation United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“We can’t achieve our other economic goals, whether it’s food security or a peaceful society, without understanding the harmful inequalities that disadvantage women. Child marriage is one of them.”

A young Sudanese girl holding a baby near a USAID tent in the Al Salam internally displaced persons camp. The United Nations Children’s Fund estimates that 33 percent of Sudanese women aged 20 to 24 were married before the age of 18. Credit: Sven Torfinn/CC By 2.0

By Reem Abbas
KHARTOUM, Jul 10 2013 (IPS)

Lawyers and rights activists are calling for a change in Sudan’s laws which allow for the marriage of girls as young as 10.

It is time, they say, that Sudan’s laws recognise gender equality so that the country’s girls and young women can take control of their lives and leave behind the cycle of child marriage and abuse.

“(Activists) are advocating a change in the personal status laws as they discriminate against women and aim to keep them in the household,” said Khadija Al-Dowahi, from the Sudanese Organisation for Research and Development (SORD), which conducts research on child marriage.

Sudan’s 1991 Personal Status Law of Muslims does not grant women equal rights. It also promotes child marriage. Article 40 of the personal status law sets no age limit for marriage and in fact states that a 10-year-old girl can be married “with the permission of a judge”. "Before we observed more marriages of girls in agricultural communities … now it is increasing in cities because of the economic situation and the attempt by families to preserve their girls from the corruption of the city." -- human rights lawyer Amel Al-Zein

“The personal status laws basically state that girls can get married when they are old enough to be able to comprehend matters … but you could easily say that girls understand matters at the age of 10,” Al-Dowahi told IPS.

In addition, Sudan has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

The U.N. Children’s Fund estimates that a third of Sudanese women now aged 20 to 24 were married before the age of 18. In rural areas, where the problem is more persistent, child marriage is as high as 39 percent as opposed to 22 percent in urban areas.

A visit to Khartoum Hospital shows clearly just how widespread the phenomenon of child marriage is in Sudan. Inside, there is an entire Obsetric Fistula ward – the patients there are mostly young mothers whose bodies are too underdeveloped to allow them to give birth, making them prone to developing fistula.

Amel Al-Zein, a lawyer who has researched the issue of child marriage, is very critical of the country’s personal status laws.

“Unlike other countries in the region or Islamic countries per se, it does not specify a certain age for marriage, which is the only guarantee to controlling child marriage,” Al-Zein told IPS.

Al-Zein stated that women could not go to court to get a divorce or undertake any legal procedures before the age of 18, which contradicts the fact that girls as young as 10 are married.

“When we began researching issues of gender justice, we started seeing how child marriage is interlinked to many issues facing women, the women go to courts to fight over custody and get a divorce only to discover how terrible and discriminatory the laws are,” said Al-Dowahi, whose organisation has proposed reforms to the laws.

SORD has recently established a legal aid centre for women being discriminated against by the personal status laws. So far 46 cases have arrived at the centre since its inception three months ago.

Meanwhile, the Council of Sudanese Scholars, a prestigious religious body, is  causing controversy. Last year when its secretary-general, Prof. Mohamed Osman Salah, spoke in favour of child marriage, activists became infuriated.

Salah told the press in October 2012: “Islam encourages youth to marry to save them from perversion or any dangers of being single and to make them happy and to preserve reproduction.”

Not all religious scholars share Salah’s opinion. This is mainly because child marriage in Sudan is a consequence of social and cultural traditions, not only religious values.

Sarah Mohamed*, for example, was married off at 13 years old because the nearest high school for girls was too far from her village – lack of access to education makes parents less likely to keep daughters at home.

This is not an unusual age for getting married in her small village of Karko, which lies in Southern Kordofan.

“I remember how confused I felt, I had no idea what marriage is, I was a child,” Mohamed, who turned 30 a few weeks ago and now has five children, told IPS.

She had her firstborn at 16 and today very few people can believe that she has a son in high school.

Rana Ahmed* had a different experience. She was 15 when her mother discovered that she was dating a boy in her neighbourhood, after she caught her speaking to him on the phone.

“She became too upset and told me that she would find me a husband before I did something really bad. She said this would make me stop playing around,” Ahmed, now 24, told IPS.

Her husband, who was in his late 30s at the time, took Rana abroad, where he worked as a doctor, for five years. When they returned to Sudan, with her two young children, she felt that she wanted to live again.

“I was bored and unfulfilled in my life, I wanted to experience what girls my age experience. I wanted to have the freedom to date and go out,” said Ahmed who is now divorced.

Al-Dowahi said that Ahmed’s story is not unique – young girls are not ready for family responsibilities or for sexual experience. Some end up succeeding and going back to school, but others cannot cope and end up having affairs and living a quite different life.

As Sudan’s economic situation continues to deteriorate, activists have said that  cities are themselves becoming similar to rural areas, with child marriage becoming a pressing problem even among the educated urban communities.

“Before we observed more marriages of girls in agricultural communities … now it is increasing in cities because of the economic situation and the attempt by families to preserve their girls from the corruption of the city,” said Al-Zein.

SORD’s research showed that women in camps for internally displaced persons and in east Sudan usually face early marriage more than others.

In fact, east Sudan is home to the youngest divorcee – a young girl who was granted a divorce when she was nine. In the traditions of her community, girls are married at the age of two months, and taken to their husbands after they reach 10 years of age.

Lakshmi Sundaram, global coordinator of Girls not Brides, a global partnership to end child marriage, thinks it is a question of the value placed on the girl-child.

“We have to challenge converting a girl, even with her consent, into an economic commodity. We have to address the fundamental aspect that a girl has intrinsic value as a human being, not just a value cost,” Sundaram told IPS.

*Names changed to protect identity.

"Sweet 16" marriages are a cause of controversy in Malawi. Credit: Claire Ngozo/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 11 2012 (IPS)

The United Nations has launched a global campaign to abolish an anachronistic social practice still prevalent in some communities around the world: child marriages.

“International conventions declare that child marriage is a violation of human rights because it denies girls the right to decide when and with whom to marry,” says a new report released Thursday by the U.N.Population Fund (UNFPA).

The launch also marked the first International Day of the Girl Child – Oct. 11 – as designated by the 193-member General Assembly last year in order “to recognize girls’ rights and highlight the unique challenges girls face around the world”.

Over 67 million women, 20 to 24 years old in 2010, had been married as girls. Half were in Asia, one-fifth in Africa, the study said. And in the next decade, 14.2 million girls under 18 will be married every year.

If present trends continue, this will rise to an average of 15.1 million girls a year, starting in 2021 until 2030, according to the study titled “Marrying too Young: End Child Marriage”.

UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, who is highly critical of the practice, says he is determined to help abolish child marriages worldwide.

“No social, cultural or religious rationale for child marriage can possibly justify the damage these marriages do to young girls and their potential,” he said. “A girl should have the right to choose whom she marries and when. Since many parents and communities also want the very best for their daughters, we must work together to end child marriage”.

“It is the only course by which we can avert what otherwise is the human tragedy of child marriage,” he said.

Dr. Osotimehin also said that child marriage is an appalling violation of human rights and robs girls of their education, health and long-term prospects.

“Marriage for girls can lead to complications of pregnancy and childbirth – the main causes of death among 15-19-year-old girls in developing countries,” he added.

Dr. Osotimehin also expressed concern over the 14-year-old Pakistani school girl who was shot Wednesday for being an education rights campaigner in her home country.
The campaign to abolish child marriages has strong support from several U.N. agencies, including UN Women, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, and international human rights organisations such as Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage and Human Rights Watch.

Michelle Bachelet, executive director of UN Women, told IPS that UN Women welcomes the UNFPA report on child marriage.

“The report should be a wake-up call to all of us that we need to take strong action to end child marriage,” she said.

She said no girl should be robbed of her childhood, her education and health, and her aspirations.

“Yet today more than 14 million girls are denied their rights each year when they are married as child brides. UN Women calls on all governments and all people to stop child marriage and protect the rights of girls,” said Bachelet.

Anju Malhotra, of the Gender and Rights Section at UNICEF, said the International Day of the Girl Child readily reflects the need to put girls’ rights at the centre of development.

“The U.N. and partners are coming together to show the incredible progress made and to highlight the ongoing challenges,” she said.

In a statement released Thursday, UNICEF said in India, one of the countries in the world with the largest number of girls being married before their 18th birthday, child marriage has declined nationally and in nearly all states from 54 percent in 1992-1993 to 43 percent in 2007-2008, but the pace of change is slow.

Experiences in contexts as diverse as Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Ethiopia, India, Niger, Senegal and Somalia show how combining legal measures with support to communities, providing viable alternatives – especially schooling – and enabling communities to discuss and reach the explicit, collective decision to end child marriage yield positive results, UNICEF said.

In a report released Thursday, Human Rights Watch said it has documented human rights violations against married girls and boys in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Iraq, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, South Sudan, and Yemen.

The testimonies of the children interviewed illustrate the profoundly detrimental impact of child marriage on their physical and mental well-being, education, and children’s ability to live free of violence.

The consequences of child marriage do not end when child brides reach adulthood, but often follow them throughout their lives as they struggle with the health effects of getting pregnant too young and too often, their lack of education and economic independence, domestic violence, and marital rape.

Asked it was fair – or unfair – to say that most child marriages take place in Muslim countries, Liesl Gerntholtz, director of the women’s right’s division at Human Rights Watch, told IPS, “It is very unfair to say this, as child marriage happens in many different communities, including Christian ones.”

To give a few examples, she said, in Burkino Faso, 48 percent of girls now between the ages of 20 and 24 were married before they reached 18; in Cameroon, the figure is 36 percent; in the Central African Republic it is 61 percent; and in the Democratic Republic of Congo is 39 percent.

“These are UNICEF figures, so they are as reliable as it is possible for them to be,” she said.

Meanwhile, the UNFPA announced it will invest an additional 20 million dollars over the next five years to reach “the most marginalized adolescent girls in 12 countries with high rates of child marriage”. The countries include Guatemala, India, Niger and Zambia.

“This investment will allow UNFPA to deliver more systematic and integrated programmes at scale to support married and unmarried girls aged 10-18 years that are at risk of dropping out of school, child marriage, and adolescent pregnancy,” said Dr. Osotimehin, UNFPA’s executive director.

The New York-based Ford Foundation also pitched in with a 25-million-dollar commitment to help end child marriages worldwide.