STAFF WRITER
THE World Vision International has said poverty levels have pushed up child marriages in some third world countries.
A latest report by the humanitarian organisation, titled “Covid-19 and child marriages” notes that poverty among children eventually led to child marriages.
“The number of children experiencing crisis level hunger increased by 12 million between the years 2019 to 2020, meaning an additional 3.3 million children could be married before the age of 18.
“Children who are not in school are 3.4 times more likely to be married than their peers that are in school. 82 percent of the children interviewed who were married became married after the debut of the pandemic,” the report noted.
The World Vision report further shows that 2020 recorded the waste cases with regards to child marriages.
The report also indicates that as global hunger levels drastically increase, so will child marriage rates, with a hungry child being 60 percent more likely to be married than a child not experiencing hunger.
“The World Vision report covering Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Ghana and India reveals that the surge in child marriage rates is already clearly taking place. The year 2020 saw the largest increase in child marriage rates in 25 years,” the report read.
According to World Vision Data, between March to December 2020, child marriages more-than doubled in many communities compared to 2019.
“In an assessment of children and families across four countries from July to September 2021, World Vision found a strong correlation in three areas adversely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic: hunger, access to education and parental support.”
Police in August arrested a 26-year-old man after a teenage girl, Anna Machaya died during childbirth, in a case that has sparked outrage among citizens and rights activists. Her parents were also arrested.
