Bangladesh has highest prevalence of child marriage in South Asia: UNICEF

Bangladesh has the highest prevalence of child marriage with 34.5 million in South Asia, according to a UNICEF report released on Wednesday.
In Bangladesh, 51 per cent of young women were married in their childhood, according to the report which uses data from the Bangladesh 2019 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey.
Bangladesh has the highest prevalence of child marriage in South Asia and the eighth highest in the world. Approximately 34.5 million women in Bangladesh were married before they turned 18 and over 13 million women were married before they turned 15.
South Asia remains home to nearly half (45 per cent) of the world's child brides.
"Children should not be married. Despite progress, the number of child brides in Bangladesh is staggering. Millions of girls are being robbed of their childhood, and denied their fundamental rights. We need urgent and concerted action to protect girls, to ensure that they stay in school, and have the opportunity to grow up to their fullest potential," said Sheldon Yett, UNICEF Representative to Bangladesh.
Despite a steady decline in child marriage in the last decade, multiple crises including conflict, climate shocks, and the ongoing fallout from COVID-19 are threatening to reverse hard-earned gains, according to a new analysis issued by UNICEF.
Worldwide, an estimated 640 million girls and women alive today were married in childhood, or 12 million girls per year, according to the latest global estimate included in the analysis.
The share of young women who married in childhood has declined from 21 per cent to 19 per cent since the last estimates were released five years ago. However, in spite of this progress, global reductions would have to be 20 times faster to meet the Sustainable Development Goal of ending child marriage by 2030.
Girls living in fragile settings are twice as likely to become child brides as the average girls globally, the analysis notes.
For every ten-fold increase in conflict-related deaths, there is a 7 per cent increase in the number of child marriages.
At the same time, extreme weather events driven by the climate change increase a girl's risk, with every 10 per cent deviation in rainfall connected to around a 1 per cent increase in the prevalence of child marriage, said UNICEF.

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