The global charity World Vision says four million girls are at risk of child marriage in the next two years because of the coronavirus pandemic, with deepening poverty likely to drive many families to marry off their daughters early.
The risks are further exacerbated by the fact that schools are closed and organisations working to combat child marriage are finding it harder to operate during lockdowns.
“When you have any crisis like a conflict, disaster or pandemic rates of child marriage go up,” Erica Hall, World Vision’s child marriage expert, tells the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “If we don’t start thinking about how to prevent it now it will be too late. We can’t wait for the health crisis to pass first.”
