An initiative that empowered girls in rural Bangladesh to tackle child marriage has shown encouraging results in a country where the practice is stubbornly persistent.
Child marriage is illegal in the south Asian nation, but it is still widely accepted as a cultural norm and the law is poorly enforced. Consequently, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 51% of young Bangladeshi women aged 20–24 were married before the age of 18. Bangladesh, it adds, has around 38 million child brides, with 13 million wed before turning 13.
The systemic problem is more prevalent in deprived and climate-vulnerable communities, where girls are seen as a burden and are ‘married off’ by their families to save money. Experts say that poverty remains the primary driver, compounded by climate shocks in vulnerable regions, where some areas have reported sharp increases in child marriage following environmental disasters.
