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Coronavirus could put 4 million girls at risk of child marriage
May 20, 2020
International children's charity, World Vision, has warned that coronavirus could put an extra 4 million girls at risk of early and enforced marriage. Deepening poverty, caused by the pandemic, is likely to add further financial burdens onto families, causing them to marry off their daughters early. The closure of school and health care facilities also leaves girls increasingly vulnerable.
Four million girls are at risk of child marriage in the next two years because of the new coronavirus pandemic, a global charity said on the 15th of May, as campaigners warned that the crisis could undo decades of work to end the practice.
Deepening poverty caused by the loss of livelihoods is likely to drive many families to marry off their daughters early, World Vision said.
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"When you have any crisis like a conflict, disaster or pandemic rates of child marriage go up," the charity's child marriage expert Erica Hall told 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."
Campaigners said the risks were exacerbated by the fact that schools were closed and organisations working to combat child marriage were finding it harder to operate during lockdowns.
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