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17% of girls in Egypt are married before their 18th birthday. While the rate of child marriage in Egypt is declining, religious and traditional ideals and customs have stalled this progress.

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Child Marriage is any formal marriage or informal union where one or both of the parties are under 18 years of age.

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Each year, 12 million girls are married before the age of 18.

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Top 20 Countries with the Highest Numbers of Child Marriage

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Top 20 Countries with the Highest Numbers of Child Marriage

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The link below provides a list of the top 20 countries with the highest numbers of child marriages.

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Child marriage around the world - Girls Not Brides

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Child marriage is a truly global problem that cuts across countries, cultures, religions and ethnicities. Child brides can be found in every region in the world, from the Middle East to Latin America, South Asia ...

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India has the highest number of child brides in the world. It is estimated 27% of girls are married before their 18th birthday.

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1. In many of the communities in India, girls as seen as an economic burden and marriage therefor transfers the responsibility to her new husband.

2. Women are seen as a burden for multiple reasons, the first being it is believed once married off that she will now only care for her in-laws and not her own parents.

3. The second reason being the dowry the brides family is suppose to give the grooms family. This could be in the form of cash or expensive gifts. The more educated the groom is the higher the dowry expected.

4. Also Indians are very obsessed with their family name and its legacy. Therefor since boys carry forward the family name as girls usually adopt the surname of their husband, Indian parents believe that since girls are not a name-bearer, they are a burden.

These three examples are some of the reasons an Indian family will marry off their daughter at a young age.

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The legal age for marriage is 18 for women and 21 for men according to the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act. It includes a right to declare a marriage invalid if underage, but this relies on families to report the act.

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Despite possible signs of progress, Bangladesh continues to have one of the highest rates worldwide and the highest rate of marriage involving girls under 15. 52% of girls are married by their 18th birthday and 18% by the age of 15.

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1. As well as strongly embedded cultural and religious beliefs, drivers of child marriage include poverty, parents’ desire to secure economic and social security for their daughters, and the perceived need to protect girls from harm, including sexual harassment.

2. Just like India dowry is also a factor, with prices often increasing the older a girl gets. This financial pressure often means that girls from poorer families are more likely to be child brides.

3. Natural disasters also have an effect on child marriage in many regions of Bangladesh. Frequent flooding and river erosion means families live with the constant threat of insecurity and increased poverty, which impacts decisions about schooling and marriage for girls.

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Above is a picture of a child bride and her new husband. Around 30% of young girls will be married before their 15th birthday. In Bangladesh child marriage is illegal but birth certificates are easily forgotten by bribing officials.

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The minimum legal age for marriage in Bangladesh is 18 for women and 21 for men.

However, the Child Marriage Restraint Act 2017 includes a loophole where a court can allow child marriage in “special cases”. The act does not exactly define what those “special cases” might be.

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The following video is a great example of how child marriage can affect a young girl. It provides two real-life examples of young girls in Bangladesh, one who was married off by the age of 14 and the other who with the help of UNICEF attended school and avoided getting married young.

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Bangladesh Child Marriage: Two Girls' Stories

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Child marriage was banned in Mexico in 2014, and while rates of child marriage around the world have fallen in recent decades, the numbers in Mexico haven't moved much.

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1. Child marriage in Mexico is driven by many different factors. These factors include poverty, tradition and patriarchal gender norms. It is more common in rural areas, particularly among indigenous groups where social practices and customary laws prevail over state legislation.

2. Another factor causing child marriage is lack of education or employment. 92% of girls in informal unions in Mexico are out of school. Lack of education or employment can push girls to view marriage as a path towards independence and financial stability. Others may also see marriage as an opportunity to flee violence in their family homes.

3. Gender norms around marriage and girls sexuality also play a significant role. On one hand, the sexualization of girls encourages men to look for younger partners. While on the other hand, marriage is still seen by many women and girls as a way to gain respect and status in their communities.

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The General Law on the Rights of Children and Adolescents 2014 says you must be 18 years as the minimum age of marriage, but girls can marry at 14 and boys can marry at 16 with parental consent.

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The article attached below gave me great insight on child marriage in mexico and the impact of it. Compassion is an amazing organization that is working towards educating girls and their families on the harmful effects of child marriage.

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Married too young in Mexico - Compassion UK Blog

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By the time you have read this sentence, a girl under the age of 18 will have been married, that's 28 child brides a minute.

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The article below is a great insight on how the Human Rights Watch is working towards Laws that prohibit child marriage.

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© 2014 Marcus Bleasdale/VII for Human Rights Watch

(Nairobi) - Child marriage in Tanzania limits girls' access to education and exposes them to serious harms, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch documented cases in which girls as young as seven were married. The government should set 18 as the minimum marriage age for girls and boys as a first step toward eradicating child marriage and improving the lives of girls and women.

The 75-page report, " 'No Way Out': Child Marriage and Human Rights Abuses in Tanzania," documents how child marriage severely curtails girls' access to education, and exposes them to exploitation and violence - including marital rape and female genital mutilation (FGM) - and reproductive health risks. Human Rights Watch examined the gaps in Tanzania's child protection system, the lack of protection for victims of child marriage, and the obstacles girls face in attempting to obtain redress, as well as shortcomings in existing laws and government plans to combat child marriage.

"Tanzania's draft Constitution unfortunately provides no minimum age for marriage," said Brenda Akia, women's rights research fellow at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. "The Tanzanian government should show leadership on child marriage by making 18 the minimum age in the Marriage Act and providing stronger protections against child marriage."

The Human Rights Watch report is based on in-depth interviews with 135 girls and women in 12 districts in Tanzania, as well as with government officials, local activists, and international agency personnel.

Tanzania's Marriage Act of 1971 sets the minimum age at 18 for boys and 15 for girls with parental consent. It also permits both girls and boys to marry at 14 with a court's permission. The Constituent Assembly, tasked with writing a new constitution, missed an opportunity to include a uniform minimum marriage age in its October 2014 final draft, Human Rights Watch said.

The Tanzanian government plans to review the Marriage Act, based on recommendations by the Tanzanian Law Reform Commission, and will finalize a government paper for public consultation after the conclusion of the constitutional review process.

Although child marriage rates in Tanzania have decreased in recent years, they remain unacceptably high, Human Rights Watch said. Four in 10 Tanzanian women married before turning 18, according to government statistics.

Nineteen-year-old Anita's father forced her to marry at 16, during her second year of secondary school. "My father said he did not have money to support my schooling," she said. "I then discovered that he had already received 20 cows as dowry for me."

Judith was 14 and working as a domestic worker when she married to escape abuse and exploitation by her employer. "A houseboy in the house I was working in asked me to marry him," she said. "I agreed - because I saw marriage as my only option to escape mistreatment from my boss."

Girls told Human Rights Watch that their families forced them to marry so they could get dowry payments, because they did not value their daughters' education, and because the girls were pregnant or their families feared that they would become pregnant and bring disrespect to the family. Other girls said they saw marriage as a way out of poverty, violence, neglect, or child labor.

Discriminatory and vague government education policies and practices facilitate early marriages, seriously undermining girls' education and opportunities, Human Rights Watch said. Many Tanzanian schools have mandatory pregnancy testing. The government also allows schools to expel or exclude married students or students who commit offenses "against morality," widely understood to include pre-marital sex or pregnancy.

The government's Primary School Leaving Examination, which determines which pupils may proceed to secondary school, also exposes girls to child marriage, Human Rights Watch found.

Salia J., 19, was forced to marry at 15 after failing the leaving exam. "My father decided to get me a man to marry me because I was staying at home doing nothing," she said.

"Mandatory pregnancy tests and expelling pregnant and married girls from school seriously infringes on their rights, especially to education," Akia said. "The government should scrap its discriminatory regulations and enable pregnant and married girls and young mothers to continue with their education."

Child marriage puts girls and women at greater risk of sexual and gender-based violence, Human Rights Watch said. Girls who rejected or tried to resist marriages said their families assaulted and verbally abused them or threw them out. Those unable to escape marriage said their husbands beat and raped them and did not allow them to make any decisions in their homes or about their lives.

A large number of those interviewed said their husbands abandoned them and left them to care for children without any financial support. In some cases, girls experienced violence and abuse at the hands of their in-laws. Girls from the Maasai and Gogo ethnic groups said they were forced to undergo FGM to prepare them for marriage.

The government should work toward comprehensive reform of marriage and divorce laws, including setting the minimum marriage age at 18, Human Rights Watch said. It should enact a domestic violence law to make sexual violence in marriage a criminal offense and develop a national action plan to prevent and address the consequences of child marriage.

The government should also put an end to pregnancy testing in schools, allow both pregnant and married students to remain in school, and take all possible steps to allow all children to attend secondary school irrespective of their Primary School Leaving Examinations.

"Child marriage has far-reaching negative impacts on girls and women," Akia said. "Tanzania's government should take immediate and long-term steps to end the practice, and give survivors much needed psychological, social, and economic support."

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(Nairobi) - Child marriage in Tanzania limits girls' access to education and exposes them to serious harms, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch documented cases in which girls as young as seven were married.

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Tanzania has one of the highest child marriage prevalence rates in the world. Almost two out of five girls in Tanzania are married before their 18th birthday.

Due to inaccurate birth and marriage records, it is difficult to record exact figures of child marriage in Tanzania. Yet child marriage is particularly prevalent in rural areas where children get married as early as 11 years old.

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1. Some girls are forced to get married young to generate an income, or dowry, which can then be used by their brothers to secure a wife.

2. There is also a practice known as Nyumba ntobu which involves an older, wealthier woman paying a bride price for a young girl to become her wife. A man is then chosen to impregnate the girl and any children who are born belong to the older woman.

3. Human Rights Watch has highlighted that the Tanzanian government’s Primary School Leaving Examination, which determines which pupils may continue on to secondary school, exposes girls to child marriage.

4. Adolescent girls are sometimes forced to marry after failing the exam, whilst mandatory pregnancy tests and expelling pregnant and married girls from school also violates girls’ rights.

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The above picture  shows Munge Gati, 62, sitting at her compound with wife, Masero Gati, 20, and their children at a village in Tarime, Tanzania.

This is an example of the practice Nyumba ntobhu that we talked about above.

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The Law of Marriage Act (1971) allows for boys to marry at 18 and girls to marry at 14, with parental consent.

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The attached article gives more information on how Arab tourists are buying underage Egyptian slaves to serve them for just a few months and how they are getting around the law.

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Sordid trade in the 'summer brides': Arab tourists are 'buying underage Egyptian sex slaves' to serve them for just a few months'

Poor families paid a 'dowry for the temporary marriages

Young victims suffer sexual slavery and forced to be servants

Wealthy tourists from the Persian Gulf are paying to marry under-age Egyptian girls just for the summer, according to a report.

These temporary marriages are not legally binding and end when the men return to their homes in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

The tourists pay a 'dowry' to poor families through intermediaries with prices ranging from £320 to £3,200.

The young victims - some under 18 - suffer sexual slavery and are forced to be servants to their 'husbands', claims the U.S. State Department report 'Trafficking in Persons'.

BRIDE, 17, WHO WAS SOLD FOR £2,120

No foreigner can marry an Egyptian girl if there is an age difference of 10 years, according to state laws. But parents and marriage brokers are getting round the restriction.

They will forge birth certificates to make the girls appear older and the men younger. In 2009, a court in Alexandria jailed two registrars for conducting temporary marriages of hundreds of girls under 18.

Sex before marriage is banned under Islamic law and most hotels and landlords demand proof before allowing a couple to share the same room.

But the report found that many parents will marry their daughter without her consent and often the girls agree to the arrangement because their families have no money.

Some of the victims are taken back to their husband's country to work as maids while those left in Egypt are shunned by the conservative society - particularly if they have children during their temporary marriage.

The shame leads many of the girls to dump these youngsters in orphanages or abandon them with thousands of other Egyptian street children.Many of these 'brides' are also targeted by Egyptian men and forced into prostitution.

Dr Hoda Badran, who chairs the NGO Alliance for Arab Women, told the Sunday Independent that she believed poverty was the major cause of the trade.

She said:'If those families are in such a need to sell their daughters you can imagine how poor they are. Many times, the girl does not know she is marrying the husband just for the short term.

'She is young, she accepts what her family tells her, she knows the man is going to help them. If the girl is very poor, sometimes it is the only way out to help the family survive.'

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Sordid trade in the 'summer brides': Arab tourists are 'buying underage Egyptian sex slaves' to serve them for just a few months'

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Poor families paid a 'dowry for the temporary marriages Young victims suffer sexual slavery and forced to be servants Wealthy tourists from the Persian Gulf are paying to marry under-age Egyptian girls just for the summer, according to a report.

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1. Child marriage in Egypt is closely associated with deeply rooted cultural practices. 92% of the female population have experiences Female Genital Mutilation, showing the continuing of patriarchal norms around women's sexuality.

2. Girls disproportionate access to education is among the key causes. 13% of females and 3% of males aged 10-29 have never been to school.

3. As girls reach adolescence, community norms dictate that they should be married,

4. The 2015 Trafficking in Persons report highlights cases where individuals from the Gulf buy Egyptian girls for ‘temporary’ or ‘summer’ marriages, for prostitution or forced labour. These arrangements are often facilitated by the girls’ families, who profit from the transaction.

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The legal age of marriage in Egypt was increased to 18 following amendment of Egypt’s Child Law in 2008, which prohibits, but does not criminalize, the registration of child marriages

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Slate Magazine. (2018). Slate’s Use of Your Data. [online] Available at: https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/09/nyumba-ntobhu-in-tanzania-a-different-kind-of-same-sex-marriage.html [Accessed 19 Nov. 2018].

Brides, G. (2018). Child marriage around the world - Girls Not Brides. [online] Girls Not Brides. Available at: https://www.girlsnotbrides.org/where-does-it-happen/ [Accessed 19 Nov. 2018].

YouTube. (2018). India's Innocent: Secret Weddings of Child Brides - CBN.com. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMpCnulFvgg&t=278s [Accessed 19 Nov. 2018].

YouTube. (2018). Bangladesh Child Marriage: Two Girls' Stories. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9jaw_iJI6E [Accessed 19 Nov. 2018].

Compassion UK. (2018). Married too young in Mexico - Compassion UK Blog. [online] Available at: https://www.compassion.ie/blogs/married-young-mexico/ [Accessed 19 Nov. 2018].

Human Rights Watch. (2018). Tanzania: Child Marriage Harms Girls. [online] Available at: https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/29/tanzania-child-marriage-harms-girls [Accessed 19 Nov. 2018].

Mail Online. (2018). Sordid trade in the 'summer brides': Arab tourists are 'buying underage Egyptian sex slaves' to serve them for just a few months'. [online] Available at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2173796/Rich-Arab-tourists-buying-age-brides-Egypt-just-summer-3-200.html [Accessed 19 Nov. 2018].

YouTube. (2018). Why does the US have so many child brides? - BBC News. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erRrF8YWGd4 [Accessed 19 Nov. 2018].

Nytimes.com. (2018). Opinion | 11 Years Old, a Mom, and Pushed to Marry Her Rapist in Florida. [online] Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/opinion/sunday/it-was-forced-on-me-child-marriage-in-the-us.html?_r=0 [Accessed 19 Nov. 2018].

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Why does the US have so many child brides? - BBC News

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This video shows the secret weddings of child brides. In India most child weddings are secretive and the child's family has chose them to marry there soon to be husband. In this video it shows a young girls getting ready for her wedding. During the time before the wedding she doesn't stop crying uncontrollable and it shows how unhappy she is with this decisions by her family. She really had no choice and most children don't and it is more common then you think.

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CBN - The Christian Broadcasting Network

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India's Innocent: Secret Weddings of Child Brides - CBN.com

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This video shows examples of Child Bride cases right here in North America.

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When we think of child brides, most of us will picture a young bride in an under-developed country but never here in North America, but unfortunately that's not true. Child marriages happen all over the world we just don't hear about it much here. Here are some facts about child brides right here in North America:

More than 207,000 American minors were married between 2000 and 2015

Over two-thirds were 17 years old, but 985 were 14, and ten were just 12.

These minors are not considered legal adults so they cannot file for divorce, sign rental leases or seek protection in a shelter if they are abused.

Between 70-80% of child marriages end in divorce

Married children are twice as likely to live in poverty and three times more likely to be beaten by spouses than are married adults

50% drop out of high school and four times less likely to finish college.

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In the United States diplomats are working to ban it aboard, but American children are still permitted to marry ( usually with parental consent and the approval of a judge or clerk). No American state has passed a law that categorically forbids the practice.

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Below is an article about a case in Florida where an 11-year old was forced to marry her rapist.

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Credit Credit Anna Parini

When she was a scrawny 11-year-old, Sherry Johnson found out one day that she was about to be married to a 20-year-old member of her church who had raped her.

"It was forced on me," she recalls. She had become pregnant, she says, and child welfare authorities were investigating - so her family and church officials decided the simplest way to avoid a messy criminal case was to organize a wedding.

"My mom asked me if I wanted to get married, and I said, 'I don't know, what is marriage, how do I act like a wife?'" Johnson remembers today, many years later. "She said, 'Well, I guess you're just going to get married.'"

So she was. A government clerk in Tampa, Fla., refused to marry an 11-year-old, even though this was legal in the state, so the wedding party went to nearby Pinellas County, where the clerk issued a marriage license. The license (which I've examined) lists her birth date, so officials were aware of her age.

Not surprisingly, the marriage didn't work out - two-thirds of marriages of underage girls don't last, one study found - but it did interrupt Johnson's attendance at elementary school. Today she is campaigning for a state law to curb underage marriages, part of a nationwide movement to end child marriage in America. Meanwhile, children 16 and under are still being married in Florida at a rate of one every few days.

You're thinking: "Child marriage? That's what happens in Bangladesh or Tanzania, not America!"

In fact, more than 167,000 young people age 17 and under married in 38 states between 2000 and 2010, according to a search of available marriage license data by a group called Unchained at Last, which aims to ban child marriage. The search turned up cases of 12-year-old girls married in Alaska, Louisiana and South Carolina, while other states simply had categories of "14 and younger."

Unchained at Last was not able to get data for the other states. But it extrapolated that in the entire country, there were almost 250,000 child marriages between 2000 and 2010. Some backing for that estimate comes from the U.S. Census Bureau, which says that at least 57,800 Americans age 15 to 17 reported being in marriages in 2014.

Among the states with the highest rates of child marriages were Arkansas, Idaho and Kentucky. The number of child marriages has been falling, but every state in America still allows underage girls to marry, typically with the consent of parents, a judge or both. Twenty-seven states do not even set a minimum age by statute, according to the Tahirih Justice Center's Forced Marriage Initiative.

A great majority of the child marriages involve girls and adult men. Such a sexual relationship would often violate statutory rape laws, but marriage sometimes makes it legal.

In New Hampshire, a girl scout named Cassandra Levesque learned that girls in her state could marry at 13. So she set out to change the law.

A legislator sponsored Cassandra's bill to raise the age to 18, and researchers found that two 15-year-olds had recently married in New Hampshire, along with one 13-year-old. But politicians resisted the initiative.

"We're asking the Legislature to repeal a law that's been on the books for over a century, that's been working without difficulty, on the basis of a request from a minor doing a Girl Scout project," scoffed one state representative, David Bates. In March the Republican-led House voted to kill the bill, leaving the minimum age at 13. (Legislators seem willing to marry off girls like Cassandra, but not to listen to them!)

New Jersey lawmakers passed a bill that would make their state the first in the country to ban marriages of people under 18, but Gov. Chris Christie this month blocked the legislation. New York legislators are considering a bill backed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to raise the age to 17, from the current minimum, 14.

Opponents worry that raising the age will lead to out-of-wedlock births, and they note that many underage marriages are consensual.

Globally, a girl marries before the age of 15 every seven seconds, according to estimates by Save the Children. As in Africa and Asia, the reasons for such marriages in the U.S. are often cultural or religious; the American families follow conservative Christian, Muslim or Jewish traditions, and judges sometimes feel that they shouldn't intrude on other cultures.

Johnson, the former 11-year-old unwitting bride who is now fighting for Florida to set a minimum marriage age (there is none now), says that her family attended a conservative Pentecostal church and that other girls of a similar age periodically also married. Often, she says, this was to hide rapes by church elders.

She says she was raped by both a minister and a parishioner and gave birth to a daughter when she was just 10 (the birth certificate confirms that). A judge approved the marriage to end the rape investigation, she says, telling her, "What we want is for you to get married."

"It was a terrible life," Johnson recalls, recounting her years as a child raising children. She missed school and remembers spending her days changing diapers, arguing with her husband and struggling to pay expenses. She ended up with pregnancy after pregnancy - nine children in all - while her husband periodically abandoned her.

"They took the handcuffs from handcuffing him," she says, referring to the risk he faced of arrest for rape, "to handcuffing me, by marrying me without me knowing what I was doing."

"You can't get a job, you can't get a car, you can't get a license, you can't sign a lease," she adds, "so why allow someone to marry when they're still so young?"

Those are precisely the reasons marriages for even 17-year-olds are problematic, according to Fraidy Reiss, who founded Unchained at Last to fight forced marriage and child marriage. Bullied by their parents into marriage, she says, girls may feel powerless to object - and fearful of telling a judge that they don't want to wed. If they try to flee an abusive marriage, they are turned away from shelters and may be treated as simple runaways.

Some judges and clerks intervene on behalf of young girls; others do not. Reiss says one clerk told a 16-year-old bride: "Don't cry. This is supposed to be the happiest day of your life."

"For almost all of them," says Reiss, "marriage means rape on their wedding night and thereafter." Reiss, now 42, says she was forced into a marriage at age 19 by her ultra-Orthodox Jewish family.

Lyndsy Duet, now a school counselor in Texas, told me that she was forced into a marriage at 17 after enduring a series of rapes beginning when she was 14, by a young man her conservative Christian family had taken into the house. Confused, shamed and helpless, she didn't speak up - but her rapist did.

"He asked my parents if he could marry me," Duet remembers. "My mom was crying, she was so happy."

Duet felt powerless to resist her parents' pressure - and it was eight years before she could flee what she says was a violent marriage. Once, she says, her husband threatened her with a chain saw, and it was only when she went to college on her own and proved a brilliant student (she graduated first in her class) that she was able to escape.

"Most girls who reach out to us love their families," Reiss says, "and their primary concern is that they don't want their families to get into trouble."

The United States has denounced child marriage in other countries as a "human rights abuse that contributes to economic hardship," in the words of a State Department document published last year.

Let's listen to ourselves. State legislators must understand that child marriage is devastating in Niger and Afghanistan - and also in New York and Florida. It's past time to end child marriage right here at home.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SR1 of the New York edition with the headline: 'It Was Forced on Me': Child Marriage in the U.S.. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Opinion | 11 Years Old, a Mom, and Pushed to Marry Her Rapist in Florida

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When she was a scrawny 11-year-old, Sherry Johnson found out one day that she was about to be married to a 20-year-old member of her church who had raped her. "It was forced on me," she recalls.

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The following document includes all of our answers to the discussion questions that were associated with this assignment.

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The photo below is from National Geographic and was taken in India.
"Chandni looks out from behind Kisna, both 9 years old. Kisna has been married for two years now, but doesn't know the name of her husband. Instead of going to school, the two girls spend most of their time doing chores and playing in the house."