Forced into marriage at 10, pregnant at 13 and widowed by 14

The end of childhood: A child bride is pictured in Tanzania. Alemtsayhe Gebrekidan has told of how she suffered a similar fate when she married age 10

Early marriage, such as this one taking place in Malawi

Difficult: Like this child bride, photographed in Uganda's Katakwi district, Alemtsahye had her son at 13

Alemtsahye Gebrekidan was 10 when her childhood came to an abrupt end. 'I was playing outside and my mum called me inside to the house,' she remembers of the day her world changed forever.

'She said "you're going to marry". I was surprised and I cried but I didn't say anything to them [her parents].' Her wedding, to a boy of 16, took place just two months later.

Shocking though it might seem, her experience is by no means unique. According to World Health Organisation figures, 14.2 million girls under the age of 15 are forced into marriage each year.

Most come from India, the Middle East, and like Alemtsahye herself, from sub-Saharan Africa - Niger, Chad, the Central African Republic and Ethiopia among them.

The consequences are appalling. Along with an education and childhood cut short, girls suffer a traumatic initiation into sexual relationships, are put at risk of domestic violence and STI's, and have the chance of a career or better life taken away.

Worse, many also die in childbirth or from pregnancy-related complications - the leading cause of death for girls aged between 15 and 19 years old in developing countries, according to UN figures.

'Child marriage is an appalling violation of human rights and robs girls of their education, health and long-term prospects,' comments Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of UNFPA. 

'A girl who is married as a child is one whose potential will not be fulfilled.'

It's a view with which Alemtsahye agrees. Now 38 and living in London, she says she still feels angry with her parents at times and says her life was 'ruined' by her early marriage.

'My parents and his parents decided [on the marriage],' she adds. 'I didn't choose.'

Before the subject of marriage was raised, Alemtsahye remembers a happy childhood in Ethiopia's northern Tigris province.

'I was in school,' she remembers, 'although I stopped the school when I was married. I do have happy memories of childhood - it was just eat and play.'

All that ended when it was decided she would marry a boy, who until the day of their wedding, she had never met.

'I didn't know him,' she says. 'I was OK when I saw him - he was a child like me. He was upset as well, the same like me... he was 16 years old.'

As Alemtsahye's story reveals, girls aren't the only victims of forced marriages, although as Jacqui Hunt, London Director of campaigning charity Equality Now makes clear, their experience is often far more traumatic.

SOURCE-DAILYM