Addisu, 23, and his new bride Destaye, 11, are married in a traditional Ethiopian Orthodox
wedding in the rural areas outside the city of Bahir Dar, Ethiopia.
Nujoud Ali in Sana'a, Yemen. She was married to her husband, more than 20 years her senior when she was only eight years old. They are now divorced. Nujoud's story sent shock waves around the country and caused parliament to consider a bill writing a minimum marriage age into law.
A young girl in the Masanga community of Sierra Leone graduates from an alternative rites of
passage ceremony that does not include female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM/C), offered by
the Swiss civil society organization Masanga Education and Assistance.
Bishal, 15, accepts gifts from visitors as his new bride, Surita, 16, sits bored at her new home in
Kagati village, Nepal.
Veda Keate, 19, and her daughter, Sereena, 2, were among more than 400 church members taken
into protective custody after a 2008 raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-
Day Saints; Yearning for Zion Ranch in West Texas, intent on rescuing child brides.
Rajani, 5, and her boy groom, Kaushal, barely look at each other as they are married in front of
the sacred fire near Jaipur, India. By tradition, the young bride is expected to live at home until
puberty, when a second ceremony transfers her to her husband.
Maya, 8, and Kishore, 13, pose for a wedding photo inside their new home near Jaipur, India.
Sisters Yagana, 21, Yakaka 19 and Falimata, 14, were all abducted and held captive by Boko
Haram until they escaped.
Faiz, 40, and Ghulam, 11, sit for a portrait in her home prior to their wedding in Afghanistan.
Upset about the early marriages in their village, her relative exclaimed, “We are selling our
daughters because we don’t have enough food to feed the rest of our children!”
In Yemen, where marriage can resemble a business transaction, sisters Sidaba (middle) and
Galiyaah, 13 (left), marry the brothers of their cousin, 12-year- old Khawlah (right), who wed the
sisters’ uncle.
Young girls sit inside a home outside of Al Hudaydah, Yemen. Nearly half of all women in
Yemen were married as children.
“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 this portrait with
former classmate Ghada, also a child bride, outside their mountain home in Hajjah.
Fatima sits with her husband and four children in Hajjah, Yemen, July 28, 2010. It is unclear what age she is now, but Fatima says she was married around the age of 8 and started having children right after her menstruation. She has had two children die during pregnancy and guesses she is now about 22 years old. "What has happened to me is horrible. People should at least let young girls wait until their first period," she said.
Baby Seibureh, 17, and Claude Seibureh, 48, of Freetown, were married during the Ebola crisis. Because of her small stature, Baby needed a cesarean section to safely give birth to their son, Joseph. While child marriage is a critical issue in both crisis and stable contexts, child marriage is rising at alarming rates in humanitarian settings.
Aracely was 11 when she married her husband, who was 34. Now 15, she is raising her son on
her own. I thought I’d have a better life. But at the end, it didn’t turn out that way,” she said.
Debritu, 14, escaped from her husband after months of abuse. Seven months pregnant, she is
now homeless and uncertain of her future and that of her baby.
