Child marriage: a film by the Thomson Reuters Foundation
Around the world, about 10 million girls under the age of 18 are married every year. Many marry without their consent, before they are mentally or sexually ready for such a relationship. This short film by the Thomson Reuters Foundation looks at the scale and the cost of child marriage.
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"Child marriage is perhaps the most prevalent form of sexual abuse and exploitation of girls." – UNICEF
The practice is most common in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, even though most countries have laws that ban it.
The film opened a session on practical ways to stop child and forced marriage at the first Trust Women conference. The Thomson Reuters Foundation and the International Herald Tribune co-hosted the conference in London in December 2012. Finding better ways to tackle child marriage was one of its main themes.
What the film says
Every three seconds, somewhere in the world, a girl under the age of 18 is married. That is 25,000 girls a day and 10 million a year: one third of all girls in developing countries.
A woman who was a bride at 16 says: "Young children have babies – your life is ruined, your education is ruined. You become upset with everything in your life."
The film says that child marriage is most common in the poorest regions of Africa, South America and Latin America. It names the ten worst countries as Niger, Chad, Mali, Bangladesh, Guinea, the Central African Republic, Mozambique, Nepal, Malawi and Ethiopia.
The consequences
When a child is married, the consequences reach far:
- She is often not allowed to go to school.
- She is expected to raise children while she is still a child herself.
- Her children are likely to grow up hungry, poor and without education.
- She may suffer physical, sexual and psychological abuse.
- Her body is not fully developed, so she is more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth, to be infected with HIV/AIDS, or to develop obstetric fistula, which causes severe incontinence.
A woman who was a bride at 17 says: "People would ask who is making that bad smell, coughing and covering their noses. So I was always isolating myself. This problem has separated me from my husband and forced him to divorce me."
Many countries outlaw child marriage, but the law is often not enforced, or it operates alongside customary and religious law. When the law clashes with tradition, the film asks, how do we end a practice so entrenched, so widespread and so devastating for millions?