Girls living in conflict-affected countries are more than 20% more likely to marry as children than those residing outside conflict zones.
This is what emerges from a new analysis by
Save the Children
, the international organization that has been fighting for over 100 years to save girls and boys at risk and guarantee them a future, published on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of International Girls' Day.
Eight of the 10 countries with the highest rates of early marriage, in fact, are experiencing humanitarian crises - including conflicts and climate disasters - which, by causing the interruption of education, make it more difficult to search for work, increase the costs of food and poverty as well as weakening the safety nets that keep children safe from violence.
Nearly 90 million - or one in 5 globally - girls and adolescents between the ages of 10 and 17 living in conflict zones with devastating impacts on their physical and mental wellbeing and on their future opportunities.
While girls living in East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean and South Asia are the most exposed to conflict-related risk of early marriage, West and Central Africa - a region affected by conflict and climate emergencies, which cause poverty and food shortages - it has the highest rates in the world.
Nigeria is the country that currently has the highest number of child marriages in the world, despite the law prohibiting it.
In 2021, the risk of gender-based violence was classified as severe or extreme in 95% of humanitarian crises
.
Actions to address it, however, have received less funding than any other form of protection provided in the context of humanitarian responses.
The report - which analyzed data on more than 2 million women in 56 countries over the past 30 years, taking into account those relating to girls who married as children and lived within 50km of an armed conflict - also examines progress made to end child marriages and since International Girls' Day was proclaimed in 2012.
Although it is estimated that 25 million child marriages were avoided globally between 2008 and 2018, we are still a long way from reaching the global Sustainable Development Goal deadline of ending child marriage by 2030. Projections , indeed,
This number, however, could increase further as the effects of the Covid pandemic are combined with the climate emergency, rising conflicts and rising cost of living.
In most countries,
girls raised in poorer families are four times more likely to marry early than girls from wealthier families
.
Rising poverty could now put more girls at risk.
