Child marriage is any formal marriage or informal union where one or both of the parties are under 18 years of age.
Each year, 12 million girls are married before the age of 18.
That is 23 girls every minute.
Nearly 1 every 2 seconds.
Child marriage is fuelled by gender inequality, poverty, traditions, and insecurity.
Why does it happen?
Child marriage looks different from one community to the next. Solutions must be local and contextual.
How can we end it?
Child marriage violates girls’ rights to health, education and opportunity. It exposes girls to violence throughout their lives, and traps them in a cycle of poverty.
Child marriage directly hinders the achievement of at least six of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Globally, the rates of child marriage are slowly declining but progress isn't happening fast enough.
More than 650 million women, and over 150 million men, already suffer the consequences of child marriage.
If there is no reduction in child marriage, the global number of women married as children will reach 1.2 billion by 2050, with devastating consequences for the whole world.
Target 5.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals aims to end child marriage by 2030.
The African Union and the South Asia Initiative to End Violence against Children have launched initiatives to end child marriage and support married girls.
Countries are developing national action plans to end child marriage, in partnership with civil society, UN agencies and girls themselves.
