Zambia

Mara Steinhaus, Amy Gregowski, Natacha Stevanovic Fenn and Suzanne Petroni 2016

Choosing whether, when and who to marry is one of the most important, personal decisions that one can make. Yet, in many places around the world, girls and boys are forced into marriage before they’re ready, a practice known as “child marriage”. Around the world, an estimated 15 million girls are married each year before they turn 18, and UNICEF estimates that 720 million women alive today were married as children. The harmful consequences of child marriage have been well documented.