A simple story

Entirely familiar, nothing new, but heartbreaking all the same. Multiply by X million every year.

“I wanted to get an education but my parents were determined to marry me off,” says Himanot Yehewala, an Ethiopian girl who was married five years ago at the age of 13.

“I tried to run away but my mother said she would kill herself if I did not marry him.”

That’s all – just that. She wanted to get an education, but she couldn’t; she had to stop getting an education and be a premature adult, instead. Her chance of a more interesting and useful life was over, at age 13. Multiply by X million every year.

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