There were 290 million child brides in the region, accounting
for 45% of the global total, the children's agency of the United
Nations said, calling for more efforts to end the practice.
"The fact that South Asia has the highest child marriage burden
in the world is nothing short of tragic," said Noala Skinner,
UNICEF's regional director for South Asia, said in a statement.
"Child marriage locks girls out of learning, puts their health
and wellbeing at risk and compromises their future. Every girl
who gets married as a child is one girl too many."
A new study by the agency that also included interviews and
discussions across 16 locations in Bangladesh, India and Nepal
found that many parents saw marriage as the best option for
daughters who had limited options to study during COVID
lockdowns.
The legal age of marriage for females is 20 in Nepal, 18 in
India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and 16 in Afghanistan. It is 16
in Pakistan except for Sindh province, where the minimum age is
18.
The U.N. study also found that families were pushed by financial
strains during the pandemic to marry their daughters young in
order to reduce costs at home.
The agency said potential solutions identified in discussions
include enacting social protection measures to counter poverty,
protecting every child's right to education, ensuring an
adequate framework to enforce the law and making more efforts to
address social norms.
"We must do more and strengthen partnerships to empower girls
through education, including comprehensive sexuality education,
and equipping them with skills, while supporting communities to
come together to end this deeply rooted practice," said Björn
Andersson, Asia-Pacific regional director of the United Nations
Population Fund.
(Reporting by Shivam Patel in New Delhi; Editing by Raju
Gopalakrishnan)
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