By the end of today another 25
from The Great Debate:
By the end of today another 25,000 young children will have been robbed of their childhoods,doudounes moncler, cheated of their right to an education,Doudoune Moncler Femme, exposed to life-threatening health risks,Jordan Pas Cher, and set on a path that often leads to a life of servitude and poverty. Their plight is the result of widespread and systematic human rights violations. Yet the source of the injustice they suffer is hidden in the shadows of debates on international development: They are child brides.
Each year, 1.5 million girls -- many just starting their adolescent years -- become child brides. It was shocking for us to discover the sheerscale of the problem and to understand its impact on human rights and the life cycle of opportunities, and most tragically of all, on maternal and infant death rates.
Early marriage is a hidden crisis. Because the victims are overwhelmingly young,chaussures air jordan, poor and female, their voices are seldom heard by governments. Their concerns do not register on the agendas of global summits. But early marriage is destroying human potential and reinforcing gender inequalities on a global scale. It is subjecting young girls to the elevated health risks that come with early pregnancy and childbirth. It is reinforcing the subordination of women. And it is holding back progress toward the United Nation’s 2015 goal of universal primary education. Without educating girls who are not in school today and preventing them from marrying,Air Jordan, we cannot ever hope to meet the Millennium Development Goals.
The full extent of child marriage is not widely recognized. identified 16 countries in which over half of the young women were married by the age of 18. On a regional basis, West Africa has the highest incidence of child marriage, with Mali, Chad and Niger recording rates in excess of 70 percent. The practice is also widespread across sub-Saharan Africa, and in Bangladesh,moncler pas cher, India, Nepal and Pakistan, where many children marry at a far younger age than 18.
Yet one of the gravest injustices suffered by child brides is the denial of education. Marriage and premature pregnancies keep millions of girls out of school, imprisoned in a world of diminished opportunity. Once married or pregnant, few child brides make it back into school. For example, our research shows that only 2 percent of married girls between the ages of 15 and 19 in Nigeria attend school, compared with 69 percent of unmarried girls. Denied the chance to realize their potential through education,jordan, many of these girls will be condemned to lives blighted by poverty, illiteracy and powerlessness.
A casualty of child marriage, education is also a fundamental solution to the problem. Women who are educated marry later,nike air jordan, especially if they reach secondary school. Compared with women who have either no education or just primary schooling, the median age of marriage among girls with a secondary education is more than two years higher in Bangladesh and Nigeria, three years higher in Ethiopia and Mali, and four years higher in Chad.
Keeping girls in school and out of child marriages will also save lives. If, through a combination of education and other policies, half of the world’s teenagers delayed birth until after the age of 20, the associated decline in infant mortality rates would save 166,000 young lives a year -- or over half a million lives in the three and a half years until the 2015 Millennium Development Goal on child mortality. And not only would children's lives be saved, but mothers' as well. Over 70,moncler doudoune,000 teenage mothers die in pregnancy or childbirth every year,air jordan, a number that has remained static while it appears that for older women the figures have been coming down.
Early marriage is destroying human potential and reinforcing gender inequalities on a global scale.