Child brides

What is shocking that in this modern day and age children, especially young girls are forced into marriages which often results in life long suffering.

Photo by Stephanie Sinclair, Afganistan
Project: Too young to wed.

Girls who marry as children are less likely to achieve their full potential. They are more likely to leave education early, suffer domestic violence, contract HIV/AIDS and die due to complications during pregnancy and childbirth – their bodies simply aren’t ready.

Lots of times their babies die and they becomes grieving mother's at an age when their mothers should still have been looking after them. They get scarred for life by this trauma.

There are at least 117 countries in the world that allow child marriages. This is according to the Pew Research Center.

They looked at 198 countries and discover that 192 do have laws determining the minimum age to get married. The following six countries has no specified minimum age for marriage. They are Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Gambia and Equatorial Guinea.

The maps below show the minimum age for girls and boys to get married.

In spite of these laws 117 countries allow children to marry. There is loopholes in these laws and children are still allowed to get married.

One light in this darkness!

This is a very dark picture but in one instance a new law came into effect on Thursday 6 January in the Philippines banning this very hurtful inhumane practice!!

Plan international, a British Human rights group, said statistics show that this very poor south-east Asian land have the 12th highest incidents of child marriages in the world.

This new legislation that has been ratified by President Rodrigo Duterte now makes it a crime to marry a child under the age of 18.

This new law now looks at child marriages as child abuse and this agrees with International children and woman's rights.

Let's hope that this will also signal change for other countries.

Thank you for reading.

If you have advice or information on illegal kidnapping by CPS of families, please write about it under the #familyprotection tag. Help spread awareness.
A big thank you to @canadian-coconut who is one of the founding members and a patron of @familyprotection.

@hope777

Sources:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/09/these-are-the-countries-where-child-marriage-is-legal/
https://pulitzercenter.org/builder/lesson/too-young-wed-secret-world-child-brides-documentary-screening-and-discussion
https://maroelamedia.co.za/nuus/wereld/filippyne-verbied-kinderhuwelike/