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Too Young to Wed Global Exhibition

30 images Created 1 Jun 2015

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  • “Whenever I saw him, I hid. I hated to see him,” Tehani (in pink) recalls of the early days of her marriage to Majed, when she was 6 and he was 25. The young wife posed for a portrait with former classmate Ghada, also a child bride, outside their home in Hajjah, Yemen.
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  • Sumeena, 15, leaves her home to meet her groom, Prakash, 16, in Kagati Village, Kathmandu Valley, Nepal on Jan. 24, 2007. The harmful traditional practice of early marriage is common in Nepal. The Kagati village, a Newar community, is most well known for its propensity towards this practice. Many Hindu families believe blessings will come upon them if marry off their girls before their first menstruation.
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  • Bishal, 15, accepts gifts from visitors as Surita, 16 sits bored at her new home. In Nepal, as in many countries, not only girls, but boys too are married young. The Kagati village, a Newar community, is most well known for its propensity towards this practice.
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  • Addisu, 23 and his new bride Destaye, 11, are married in a traditional Ethiopian Orthodox wedding in the rural areas outside the city of Gondar, Ethiopia. Community members said that because of his standing as a priest, Addisu’s bride had to be a virgin. This was the reason Destaye was given to him at such a young age.
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  • Family members escort the newly married Maya, 8, and Kishore, 13, to his family’s home. They were married on the Hindu holy day of Akshaya Tritiya, which is said to bring good luck and is widely known in Rajasthan as the day for child marriages.
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  • In the Amhara Region, family members place a white cloth over the head of Leyualem, 14, as her new groom and groomsmen prepare to whisk her away on a mule. Leyualem had never met her husband before her wedding day, yet submitted as they bound her in the white wedding cloth. The men later said it was placed over her head so she would not be able to find her way back home, should she want to escape the marriage.
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  • Leyualem, 14, is transported by mule to her new home on her wedding day. The men later said the cloth was placed over her head so she would not be able to find her way back home, should she want to escape the marriage.
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  • A young sex worker named China sits stunned after being beat up by a client. Many of the girls who run away from child marriages end up trafficked to brothels where they often face intense violence.
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  • A woman tends to grain during the rainy season in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia on Aug. 13, 2012. According to the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA, 37 percent of young women in sub-Saharan Africa aged 20 to 24 were married before turning 18. In 2010, there were 13.1 million girls married by age 18 in sub-Saharan Africa and the number is expected to rise to 15 million by 2030.
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  • Radha, 15, observes herself in a cracked mirrorvthe day before her wedding. Despite legislation forbidding child marriage in India (Child Marriage Restraint Act-1929), the much more progressive Prohibition of Child<br />
Marriage Act (2006) and many initiatives to prevent child marriage, marrying children off at a very tender age continues to be accepted by large sections of society.
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  • Rajani, 5, and her boy groom, Kaushal, barely look at each other as they are married in front of the sacred fire. By tradition, the young bride is expected to live at home until puberty, when a second ceremony transfers her to her husband.
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  • Maya, 8, and Kishore, 13, pose for a wedding photo inside their new home, the day after the Hindu holy day of Akshaya Tritiya, called Akha Teej in North India. Despite legislation forbidding child marriage in India (Child Marriage Restraint Act-1929) and the much more progressive Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (2006) and many initiatives to prevent child marriage, marrying children off at a very tender age continues to be accepted by large sections of society.
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  • In Yemen, where marriage can resemble a business transaction, sisters Galiyaah, 13, and Sidaba (11), marry the brothers of their cousin, Khawlah (12), who wed the sisters’ uncle.
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  • Faiz, 40, and Ghulam, 11, sit in her home prior to their wedding in rural Afghanistan. Ghulam said she is sad to be getting engaged as she wanted to be a teacher. Before she was made to drop out of school her favorite class was Dari, the local language. Married girls are seldom found in school, limiting their economic and social opportunities.
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  • Rajni, 5, was woken up at 4 am and carried by her uncle to be married in a secret wedding ceremony. Three young sisters Radha, 15, Gora, 13, and Rajni, 5, were married to three young grooms, who were also siblings, on the Hindu holy day of Akshaya Tritiya in North India.
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  • Fifteen-year-old Sarita's face, covered in tears and sweat, is covered before she is sent to her new home with her groom. The previous day, she and here young sister, Maya, 8, were married to another set of siblings  on the Hindu holy day of Akshaya Tritiya, called Akha Teej in North India. Despite legislation forbidding child marriage in India (Child Marriage Restraint Act-1929) and the much more progressive Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (2006) and many initiatives to prevent child marriage, marrying children off at a very tender age continues to be accepted by large sections of society.
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  • Nujood Ali, 12, two years after her divorce from her husband who was more than 20 years her senior. Nujood's story sent shock waves around the country and caused parliament to consider a bill writing a minimum marriage age into law. The bill is still pending. "Don't let your children get married. You'll spoil their educations, and you'll spoil their childhoods [if] you let them get married so young."
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  • Female relatives of bride-to-be, Roshan, 8 (with white scarf), prepare food and tea for guests on the day of her engagement to Said, 55, at her home in rural Afghanistan. Father of the bride, Abdul, 60, said he is unhappy giving his daughter away at such a young age, but has no choice due to severe poverty. In addition, once the girl's father has agreed to the engagement, she is pulled out of school immediately.
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  • Young girls sit inside a home outside of Al Hudaydah, Yemen. Yemen's women's rights groups agree that child marriage is rampant in every part of Yemeni society.
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  • After celebrating with female relatives at a wedding party, Yemeni brides Sidaba, 11, and Galiyaah, 13, are veiled and escorted to a new life with their husbands in Sanaa, Yemen.
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  • Asia, 14, washes her newborn at home in Hajjah while her 2-year-old daughter plays. Asia is still bleeding and ill from childbirth, yet has no knowledge of how to care for herself nor access to maternal health care.
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  • Debitu, 14, escaped from her husband after months of abuse. Seven months pregnant, she is now homeless and uncertain of her future. “I didn’t want to get pregnant because I was very small. I wanted to wait until I am old enough... Sometimes I think I will die [during child birth].”
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  • Mejgon, 16, weeps in the arms of her caseworker near fellow residents at an NGO shelter run by Afghan women in Herat, Afghanistan. Mejgon’s father sold her at the age of 11 to a 60-year-old man for two boxes of heroin.
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  • In a practice known as baad, Bibi Aisha's father promised her to a Taliban fighter when she was 6 years old as compensation for a killing that a member of her family had committed. She was married at 16 and subjected to constant abuse. At 18, she fled but was caught by police, jailed and then returned to her family. Her father-in-law, husband and three other family members took her into the mountains, cut off her nose and her ears, and left her to die. “I was a woman exchanged for someone else’s wrongdoing. [My new husband] was looking for an excuse to beat me.”
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  • Kandahar policewoman Malalai Kakar arrests a man who repeatedly stabbed Jamila, his 15-year-old wife and mother of his two children after she disobeyed him. When asked what would happen to the husband for this crime, “Nothing,” Kakar said. “Men are kings here.”<br />
Policewoman Kakar was later killed by the Taliban.
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  • Sumeena, 16, cries under her veil as family members carry her to her wedding ceremony in Nepal.
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  • Aracely, 15, holds her infant. “What I hope is to keep moving forward... to see how I can get my boy ahead. The hard thing, maybe... when he gets older and he leaves... that's when is going to be hard for me. When he is older. Because he is the one who will help me get ahead.<br />
<br />
Aracely is one of the half a million of Guatemalan girls who marry and give birth before they can legally vote, drink, or buy cigarettes. According to a 2012 UN Population Fund survey, 30% of Guatemalan women aged 20-24 were married by 18, and that number may be even higher in rural areas. Teenage births are so common that there’s even a law requiring mothers under 14 to have C-sections, because their hips are too narrow to give birth.
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  • Sandra, 14, was married three years prior and now has a five month old son, Alexander. Her husband, 26, met her in the neighborhood. “I don’t have parents, I grew up with my aunt and uncle after my father died. My father was killed and I don’t know how. My mother moved to another community. She abandoned me,” she said. “I would like to have a girl for my next baby. I would like her to study.”
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  • Rosario, 14, peers into the neonatal ICU of Hospital San Benito. “Our girls believe they were brought into this world to be a mother,” said Dr. Daniel Alvarez a pediatrician at the hospital. “When she is 12 she is used to raising her siblings. She doesn’t go to school, she is not literate. Some of these girls don’t even learn Spanish, they only use their mother language. At a certain age, the only escape in their mind is to get involved with a boy, and do the same thing… be a mother, be part of the cycle. That’s the cycle we are trying to break. We need to give more power to women to make good choices.”
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