NEW YORK—Ghulam, age 11, sits on the floor at her home in Afghanistan. She stares at the 40-year-old man sitting next to her, without a smile on her face. While the man is old enough to be her father, he is not—he is about to become her husband.
“As she enters this union, she will leave her childhood behind forever and begin a life with no future, prospects, or promise,” Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), said from the U.N. on Thursday.
“She will most likely never get an education, becoming a mother before her young body is ready to sustain a pregnancy or simply give birth.”
Ghulam is one of some 37,000 girls under the age of 18 who are forced into childhood marriage every day, frequently with men significantly older than themselves. Often fathers exchange their daughters for money or goods, or marry them off due to longstanding cultural traditions.
“While marriage would normally be the time to celebrate the union of two people, for millions of these girls, it is anything but,” Osotimehin said.
Childhood marriage, which can affect girls as young as 5, has dire consequences, including jeopardizing their right to an education and impacting their health and development.
Dr. Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, state minister for Women and Children Affairs in Bangladesh, expressed the urgency of the problem.
“The risk of death in pregnancy and delivery from birth under the age of 15 years is five times more than for a woman in her 20s,” she said.
In the next decade, 14.2 million girls younger than 18 will be wed every year, primarily in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. With those numbers only expected to rise, UNFPA hopes to put a stop to the practice by 2030 through education, outreach, and changing laws.
Empowering Women
The United Nations marked the first observance of the International Day of the Girl Child Thursday, a global day to highlight, celebrate, and discuss ways to advance girls’ lives, with a panel of experts discussing ways to end childhood marriage.
Creating laws to raise the legal age for both boys and girls to age 18 is one step, but challenging deeply rooted cultural traditions that will raise the value of women to be on par with their male counterparts is one of the biggest obstacles.
