The United Nations Children’s Fund predicted on Thursday in New York, United States of America that without significant shifts in policy, the number of child brides in Africa would increase from 125 million to 310 million by 2050
Anthony Lake, the UNICEF Executive Director, said a recent report conducted by the agency revealed that the number of girls on the continent was expected to rise from 275 million today to 465 million by 2050.
Lake said the number of women married as children was projected to reach 310 million, surpassing South Asia as the region with the most child marriages.
He said: “If the current pace of reduction is doubled, the number of child brides can be kept at 150 million by 2050.”
Lake said it had become imperative to accelerate efforts to curb the practice because women married as child brides were at an increased risk of being victims of violence, contracting HIV and dropping out of school.
He stressed that young girls married early face higher risks of health complications from child birth and their children are more likely to be stillborn or die shortly after birth than those born to older mothers.
Lake said as a result of the number of girls affected, lost childhood and shattered future, there was urgency of banning the practice once and for all.
Cornelius Williams, UNICEF’s Associate Director for Child Protection, said virtually no progress had been made among the poorest African families.
According to Williams, the likelihood that a girl will marry as a child is as high today as it was 25 years ago.
He said in families that struggled to feed, clothe and educate their children, marriage was often seen as the best chance to secure a girl’s future and safeguard her chastity.
He said: “They see child marriage as the best chance to protect their daughters.
“If they had access to school, they would have a different perception of their girls as income earners, bosses, teachers, medical doctors, lawyers and policewomen.
“The practice will eventually die naturally.”
Williams stressed the need to increase girls’ access to reproductive health services so that they could have fewer, safer pregnancies and can break the cycle of poverty.
He said: “Child-brides are more likely to die as a result of pregnancy and child birth and to be beaten, raped or infected with HIV by their husbands than women who marry later.
“Children born to teenage mothers have a higher risk of being stillborn, dying soon after birth and having low birth weight.”
Williams challenged African governments to make sure that more girls’ births are registered so that their age would be known and to enforce laws prohibiting child marriage.
He said: “We are not seeing the change that is required.
“We need to accelerate it.
“It’s very difficult to promote change in something that’s so structural.
“The data says it very clearly that if we want to reduce the number of women affected by child marriage, what we’re doing is not sufficient.
“We’re fighting against demographics.”
The report noted that the proportion of young women in Africa who married before 18 years had dropped to 34 per cent from 44 per cent in 1990.
The report, however, said other continents’ populations were growing more slowly and their rates of child marriage are falling faster.
The minimum legal marriage age is 15 in about a dozen African countries, and change is gradual.
dpa/NAN.