Child marriage has long been common in communities from Indonesia to India and Vietnam, but numbers had been decreasing as charities made inroads in access to education and women's health. Now the practice is once again on the rise as families attempt to alleviate poverty during the pandemic.
Tens of thousands of girls across Asia are being forced into marriage by desperate families plunged into poverty because of the coronavirus pandemic, as campaigners warn years of progress tackling the practice is being undone.
Families are barely able to make ends meet, so they think it’s best to get their young daughters married off,” says Rolee Singh who runs India’s “1 Step 2 Stop Child Marriage” campaign.
And while education has been hailed as the central tenet in the battle against child marriage, activists warn that with lockdowns forcing hundreds of millions out of school, girls in the poorest parts of the world will be worst affected.
Indonesia’s Islamic authorities officially permitted more than 33,000 child marriages between January and June of this year, compared to a total of 22,000 for the whole of 2019, according to the Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection ministry.
Many of these children are adolescent girls for whom being in school is the best defence against forced marriage
This article was written by Agence France-Presse
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