Why each and everyone should oppose the practice of child marriage in some parts of the world?
For one, child marriage violates girls’ basic human rights. For instance, when girls are forced to marry, they often drop out of school, and may face serious health complications and even death from early pregnancy and childbearing, and are at greater risk of HIV infection and intimate partner violence. Also, they are often isolated, with limited opportunity to engage socially and to participate in the economic development of their communities.
While there is a growing evidence base documenting the tragic consequences of child marriage, there is a lack of data that sufficiently demonstrates the economic impacts of this harmful practice, including the economic opportunity and financial costs, costs for health care systems, lost education and earnings, lower growth potential, and the perpetuation of poverty.
Below are some of the facts so far:
Child Marriage Around the world
Education and Child Marriage
Health and Child Marriage
For one, child marriage violates girls’ basic human rights. For instance, when girls are forced to marry, they often drop out of school, and may face serious health complications and even death from early pregnancy and childbearing, and are at greater risk of HIV infection and intimate partner violence. Also, they are often isolated, with limited opportunity to engage socially and to participate in the economic development of their communities.
While there is a growing evidence base documenting the tragic consequences of child marriage, there is a lack of data that sufficiently demonstrates the economic impacts of this harmful practice, including the economic opportunity and financial costs, costs for health care systems, lost education and earnings, lower growth potential, and the perpetuation of poverty.
Below are some of the facts so far:
Child Marriage Around the world
- One third of the world’s girls are married before the age of 18 and 1 in 9 are married before the age of 15.
- In 2010, 67 million women 20-24 around the world had been married before the age of 18.
- If present trends continue, 142 million girls will be married before their 18th birthday over the next decade. That’s an average of 14.2 million girls each year.
- While countries with the highest prevalence of child marriage are concentrated in Western and Sub-Saharan Africa, due to population size, the largest number of child brides reside in South Asia.
- Girls living in poor households are almost twice as likely to marry before 18 than girls in higher income households.
- More than half of the girls in Bangladesh, Mali, Mozambique and Niger are married before age 18. In these same countries, more than 75 percent of people live on less than US$ 2 a day.
- Girls with higher levels of schooling are less likely to marry as children. In Mozambique, some 60 percent of girls with no education are married by 18, compared to 10 percent of girls with secondary schooling and less than one percent of girls with higher education.
- Educating adolescent girls has been a critical factor in increasing the age of marriage in a number of developing countries, including Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand.
- Girls younger than 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their 20s. Pregnancy is consistently among the leading causes of death for girls ages 15 to 19 worldwide.
- Child brides face a higher risk of contracting HIV because they often marry an older man with more sexual experience. Girls ages 15 – 19 are 2 to 6 times more likely to contract HIV than boys of the same age in sub-Saharan Africa.
- Girls who marry before 18 are more likely to experience domestic violence than their peers who marry later. A study conducted by ICRW in two states in India found that girls who were married before 18 were twice as likely to report being beaten, slapped or threatened by their husbands than girls who married later.
- Child brides often show signs symptomatic of sexual abuse and post-traumatic stress such as feelings of hopelessness, helplessness and severe depression.
- No one religious affiliation was associated with child marriage, according to a 2007 ICRW study. Rather, a variety of religions are associated with child marriage in countries throughout the world.