In the heart of Ethiopia, child marriage takes a brutal toll There are, according to child-rights activists, an estimated 50 million Tihuns scattered across the world: young teen or even preteen girls whose innocence is being sacrificed to arranged marriages, often with older men.
Coerced by family and culture into lives of servility and isolation, and scarred by the trauma of too-early pregnancy, child brides represent a vast, lost generation of children.
While humanitarian campaigns have focused global attention on childhood AIDS in Africa, female genital mutilation and child labor, one of the underlying sources of all these woes remains largely ignored. Child marriage, an ancient, entrenched practice long hidden in shadow, was only denounced by the United Nations as a serious human-rights violation in 2001.
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