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South Sudan has the world’s fifth-highest prevalence of child marriage.
The UNFPA has called for urgent action to be taken to protect girls around the world.
10% of girls in Nepal are married by the age of 15 and 37% by the age of 18.
The consequences of child marriage are many and varied, but it can wreak devastating effects.
The government insists the legislation is aimed at dealing with the widespread custom of child marriages and any criticism is a crude distortion of its aim.
In developing countries, one in three girls is married before the age of 18 and one in nine before the age of 15.
“The Imam and those that preside over the marriage ceremony would also be sent to jail. If you want to know whether what I am saying is true or not, try it tomorrow and see.”
In Burkina Faso, children as young as nine are being forced into marriage.
The horrific incarceration suffered by three US women kidnapped and held for ten years is now over, but for one girl every two seconds – torn from her family and forced into marriage – it has just begun, writes Vanina Trojan.