UNICEF sees an alarming increase in child marriages in the Horn of Africa. The cause is the worst drought in the region in 40 years, according to the UN children’s organization. This pushes families to the brink of destruction, so that some parents decide to marry off daughters, sometimes only twelve years old, to much older men.
Also, many more girls are at risk of being circumcised at a younger age in preparation for marriage. “Child marriage and female genital mutilation are a brutal end to childhood,” said Suzanne Laszlo, director of UNICEF Netherlands. “Girls stop going to school and become more vulnerable to domestic violence.”
Laszlo speaks of “a child crisis” and calls for more aid in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. “Not only to save lives in the short term, but also to protect girls in the long term.”
Due to the extreme drought caused by climate change in the Horn of Africa, water sources are running dry and many livestock are dying. Families lose their income and have no food. The war in Ukraine exacerbates the crisis. Somalia once imported 92 percent of all wheat from Russia and Ukraine, but supply lines are now blocked.
More than 1.8 million children are in urgent need of treatment for life-threatening acute malnutrition, UNICEF estimates. Famine threatens 213,000 people in Somalia, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.
In parts of Ethiopia, the number of child marriages has more than doubled in a year. In Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, the number of children dropping out of school due to the drought has tripled in three months, from 1.1 million to an estimated 3.3 million.
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