UN’s child-marriage goal under threat

A global goal of ending child marriage by 2030 will not be achieved unless the world steps up its efforts, campaigners warned at a meeting on Monday aimed at stopping the practice.

Twelve-million girls a year are married before the age of 18 with often devastating consequences for their health and education, and ending the practice by 2030 is one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Rates have fallen in recent years, but advocates say the practice remains widespread in some parts of the world, raising doubts about the 2030 target.

“Unless we strengthen and accelerate our work in the coming years, because of population growth, we might not be able to end child marriage in one generation,” said Mabel van Oranje, who chairs the campaign group Girls Not Brides.

“If we have a world without child marriage, this world will be trillions and trillions of dollars wealthier,” Van Oranje told the more than 500 delegates at the conference in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.

A World Bank study in 2017 showed child marriage will cost developing countries trillions of dollars in the next decade, hampering efforts to end poverty.

About 25-million early marriages have been prevented in the past decade, with the biggest decline in South Asia, Unicef said in March. But the global rate of decline was too slow at under 2% a year, said Anju Malhotra, principal adviser on gender and development for the UN children’s agency. It needs to speed up to 23% a year to meet the 2030 target.

Poverty is often the key reason for child marriage, but protracted conflicts, for example in Syria, or extreme weather in countries including Bangladesh, Mali and Niger have put more girls at risk, campaigners say.

Early marriage increases the risk of exploitation, sexual violence, domestic abuse and death in childbirth as well as making it more likely that girls will quit school, they add.

The three-day meeting that began on Monday is hosted by Girls Not Brides, which groups more than 1,000 organisations committed to ending a practice that affects 650-million women and girls today.

Among the delegates at the meeting was 17-year-old Hadiqa Bashir from Pakistan. She escaped an attempt by her family to marry her off when she was 11, and set up Girls United for Human Rights, which campaigns against early marriages.

“It’s about changing perceptions of the people,” she said, saying she hoped for inspiration from the meeting.

EARLY MARRIAGE INCREASES THE RISK OF EXPLOITATION, SEXUAL VIOLENCE, DOMESTIC ABUSE AND DEATH IN CHILDBIRTH