One in every five girls in the world is still married before her 18th birthday, the United Nations Children’s Fund said on Monday, even as it credited education, legal reform and social protection with preventing an estimated 68 million child marriages over the past 25 years. The agency released the figures to mark the International Day of the Girl Child, observed on October 11 under the theme “End child marriage and invest in girls’ rights!”
UNICEF estimates that about 650 million women and girls alive today were married as children. More than 12 million girls are married before adulthood every year, roughly one every three seconds. Sub-Saharan Africa carries the heaviest burden, with a prevalence of 31 per cent, the highest of any region.
The agency painted a grim picture of what follows such marriages. Nearly one in four ever-married or partnered girls aged 15 to 19 has experienced violence from an intimate partner, according to UNICEF. Girls in that age group are twice as likely as boys to be out of education, employment or training, and in fragile or conflict-affected settings they are nearly 90 per cent more likely to be out of secondary school than girls in stable areas.
“Every girl deserves a childhood,” UNICEF said in its message. The agency argued that keeping girls in school, widening access to health and protection services and working with families to challenge harmful norms were proven remedies. “Now we must go further and faster,” it added.
For Nigeria, the global figures carry particular weight. The 2024 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey found that 33.4 per cent of women aged 20 to 24 were married before 18, representing more than three million young women. That rate sits above the sub-Saharan average cited by UNICEF, and Nigeria remains home to the largest absolute number of child brides in the region, estimated at about 22 million.
The trend is moving in the right direction, but slowly. In 1999, about 43 per cent of Nigerian girls were married before 18, meaning the rate has fallen by roughly 10 percentage points in 25 years. At that pace of about 0.4 points a year, Nigeria would need more than 80 years to eliminate the practice, far beyond the 2030 deadline set under Sustainable Development Goal 5.3.
The national average also hides deep regional gaps. UNICEF’s analysis of the 2024 survey shows prevalence approaching 50 per cent in the North West and North East. Jigawa and Zamfara record rates of 63 per cent, while Sokoto and Katsina stand at 61 per cent, according to figures compiled by the global partnership Girls Not Brides. About 11 per cent of Nigerian girls are married before they even turn 15.
Poverty and schooling are the clearest dividing lines. Some 67 per cent of girls from the poorest households are married before 18, compared with 5.5 per cent of those from the wealthiest. Among women with no formal education, 66.7 per cent married as children, against 13 per cent of those who completed higher education. The overlap supports UNICEF’s position that keeping girls in classrooms is among the most effective protections available.
Nigeria’s legal framework has long been part of the problem. The Child Rights Act of 2003 sets 18 as the minimum age of marriage and declares any marriage below that age void. Domestication by states, however, took two decades, largely because several northern states argued that the law conflicted with Islamic and customary practice. Child rights advocates now say all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory have assented to the Act, although about 11 states are yet to gazette it, a step needed for full enforcement.
Constitutional ambiguity remains as well. Section 29(4)(b) of the 1999 Constitution provides that any married woman shall be deemed to be of full age, a clause campaigners have long argued undermines the minimum age set by the Child Rights Act. Efforts to amend the provision through previous constitutional review exercises have not succeeded.
The Federal Government has committed to ending child marriage by 2030. At a national dialogue in Abuja in February 2024, supported by UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund, stakeholders backed a national strategy and costed action plan towards that goal. Progress on implementation across the states has been uneven.
The International Day of the Girl Child was established by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2011 and first observed in 2012. UN Women, in its own message for this year’s observance, urged governments to enforce existing laws, keep girls in school and direct support to those most at risk, including girls affected by poverty, conflict and displacement. For Nigeria, where insecurity continues to disrupt schooling across much of the North, those risks remain closely tied to the country’s child marriage figures.