Coronavirus puts 4m girls at risk of child marriage

Four million girls are at a risk of child marriage in the next two years because of the new coronavirus pandemic, a global charity said on Friday, as campaigners warned that the crisis could undo decades of work to end the practice.

Deepening poverty caused by the loss of livelihoods is likely to drive many families to marry off their daughters early, World Vision said.

"When you have any crisis like a conflict, disaster or pandemic, rates of child marriage go up," the charity's child marriage expert Erica Hall told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"If we don't start thinking about how to prevent it now it will be too late. We can't wait for the health crisis to pass first."

Campaigners said the risks were exacerbated by the fact that schools were closed and organisations working to combat child marriage were finding it harder to operate during lockdowns.

The pandemic is also making it more difficult for girls to access reproductive health services which could lead to a rise in teenage pregnancies and increased pressure to marry.

Worldwide, an estimated 12 million girls are married every year before the age of 18 - nearly one girl every three seconds.

 

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