Child marriage refers to any formal marriage between a child under the age of 18 and an adult or between two children. Until today there are 650 million girls and women in the world who have been married as children. Every year 12 million more girls under the age of 18 are added to this number. The distribution among girls and boys is very uneven. Even though child marriages do also happen among boys, it only makes 1/6 of all underage marriages and therefore shows a huge gender inequality. 37% of child marriages happen in sub–Saharan Africa and from that 76% in Niger, 68% in Central Africa Republic and 67% in Chad. The consequences are immense and from a strong scope for the affected children. Child brides stop going to school, are in danger of early pregnancies, exposed to domestic violence and are stolen their right to be a child in a very early age. The covid-19 pandemic made this problem even worse.
Before the crisis the numbers went down from one in four to “only” one in five children getting married under 18. Now up to 10 million more girls will be at risk to getting married underaged because their families are poor and in need of money because of the pandemic. They sell their daughters to older man to receive a bit of money to survive and feed their other children. How sad is it that your only way out is to sell your child to a stranger? UNICEF has prevented 25 million child marriages in the last 10 years and is working hard on stopping even more. In South Asia they achieved the largest decline from 49% to 30% of child marriages, following the overall goal of achieving zero child marriages in all countries one day.
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