Too Brief a Child

Too Brief a Child: Voices of Married Adolescents

Eighty-two million girls around the globe will be married before they leave adolescence. This is their story… of lost childhoods, lost dreams and little hope of breaking the cycle of poverty and hopelessness that engulfs them.

Too Brief A Child is a special advocacy report that explores the reasons why girls marry so young. What pressures and beliefs impel their families to support and often force this? What are the costs to the girls, their families and their communities when youthful dreams must be abandoned? And what happens when the cycle is broken and families and daughters choose another path? Girls trapped by early marriage represent far more than marginalized members of their own villages and countries. They are the flashpoint for critical problems that drain the resources of developed and developing nations alike. Illiteracy, poverty, high infant and mother mortality, HIV/AIDs and loss of personal freedoms are issues of global urgency that impact child brides more than any other group.