20/07/2011

Available for over a year

Claudia Hammond reports from Ethiopia where she finds out more about child marriage. Girls as young as five, though often between the ages of nine and fourteen are married to men ten or twenty years older than them with the consent and acceptance of their family and wider community. Often girls become pregnant very young with serious health complications like fistula or even death. Claudia finds out about government and charity efforts to prevent the traditional practice of child marriage. She meets Addis, a young woman who talks about her experience of early marriage and how she managed to leave her husband and resume her education. Recent changes in the law to increase the age of marriage for women to 18 and to punish those responsible for getting a girl married at a younger age have decreased the prevalence of child marriage but in many areas the problem remains endemic with devastating health, social and psychological consequences Producer: Pamela Rutherford