More than 700 million women alive on Tuesday were married before they turned 18, the United Nations’ children agency said on Tuesday, as it co-hosts a London summit calling for more progress to end child marriages and the practice of female genital mutilation.
Figures released by UNICEF say child brides are most common in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and about one in three or some 250 million were married before they turned 15.
India alone accounts for a third of all the world’s child brides, the agency said. Poorer girls are much more vulnerable: While the wealthiest girls in India marry at around 20 years old, the poorest do so at an average age of 15.