25 million child marriages averted in the past decade: UNICEF

12, Mar 2018 | CJP Team

UNICEF recently stated that child marriage has declined worldwide in recent years, with the past decade seeing the proportion of women who were married as children being reduced from 1 in every 4 to 1 in every 5. Most notable is the progress made in South Asia in the last ten years, with a girl’s risk of being married before the age of 18 declining by more than one-third, going from 50% to 30%. Progress made in India has been a key driver of this trend. The downward trend can be attributed to raising the education rates for girls, making more investments in adolescent girls, and disseminating the message that child marriage is illegal. UNICEF data indicates that currently, the overall number of girls who are married as children is 12 million worldwide, and indicate an overall decrease of 25 million fewer marriages than what the figure expected a decade ago. Globally, around 650 million women who were married as children are currently alive. One of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals is to eliminate the practice of child marriage by 2030. Despite the decline, if progress is not hastened then, given the current trend, over 150 million more girls will still be married as children by 2030.