Britain, UN host first summit to end child marriage

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.