United Nations, 3 May. Child marriage will take 300 years to be eradicated in the world if the current rate is not reversed, warns the UN agency for children (UNICEF) in a report published today, which places the greatest challenge in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa.
The elimination of child marriage by 2030 is among the Millennium Goals, but UNICEF warns that only some regions -mainly Asia- are showing progress, while West and Central Africa, as well as Latin America, remain almost stagnant in this aspect in the last 25 years.
There are 640 million women in the world who were married as minors, in formal or informal unions, a figure that has been obtained by taking married women between the ages of 20 and 24 as a sample: of them, a third are only in India , and a second third mainly includes other Asian countries (China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan), Latin America (Brazil and Mexico) and Africa (Nigeria and Egypt).
But it is precisely in South Asia where the phenomenon has receded to a greater extent in recent years: in just a decade, the possibility of a woman marrying as a child fell from 46 to 26% of cases; a decrease in the phenomenon has also been observed in the Middle East.
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: ONE IN THREE GIRLS MARRIES UNDER AGE
On the opposite side is Sub-Saharan Africa, where one in three girls is married before the age of 18 and where 7 of the 10 countries in the world with the highest prevalence of early marriage out of the total population are located; in that region, the evolution in the last 25 years has been almost nil.
“25 years ago, sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 15% of child brides worldwide; of those currently registered, the percentage has already risen to 35%, and if the pace of the last decade continues, by 2030 it will already have risen to 41%,” the report warns.
It does not seem coincidental that Africa is also where half of the growth of the world’s population will be registered between now and 2050, a period in which large parts of Europe and China will see their populations almost stagnant.
Taking into account the class difference, it can be seen that among the richest quintiles (one-fifths), child marriage has decreased worldwide in the last quarter of a century, while in the poorest quintile, Africa and Latin America have registered increases in this phenomenon.
The report makes clear that early marriage “is a practice that impacts a lifetime: early marriage cuts short a girl’s education, stifles her opportunities and isolates her in the context of an adult relationship where she can no longer claim their rights,” he recalls.
However, it regrets that this “obvious violation of a child’s right is seen by many families as a protection measure for girls, who are provided (with marriage) financial, social and physical protection”, which explains the prevalence of the phenomenon despite repeated campaigns for its eradication. EFE
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