The proportion of girls getting married in India has nearly halved in a decade, the United Nations children's agency UNICEF said on Tuesday, which has contributed significantly to a global decline in child marriage. There has been significant drop globally in the practice as well, and 25 million child marriages have been prevented in the past decade worldwide, the UN Children's Fund said

New Delhi: There has been a significant drop in the number of child marriages in India -- from nearly 50 to 30 per cent -- in the last 10 years, a survey by UN children's agency Unicef showed on Tuesday. An estimated 12 million girls under 18 are getting married every year globally, according to new data from UNICEF released on Tuesday. “India constitutes more than 20% of the world’s adolescent population and accounts for the highest number of child marriages in South Asia given its size and population,” Javier Aguilar, Unicef’s chief of child protection, told Thomson Reuters Foundation. Almost 15% fewer girls get married before they turn 18 now than they did a decade ago, “in large part” due to progress in India, the United Nations Children’s Fund said on Tuesday. The UN children’s agency attributed increasing rates of girls’ education, proactive government investments in adolescent girls and strong public awareness about the illegality of child marriage and the harm it causes are among the reasons for the decline. UNICEF’s Principal Gender Advisor, Anju Malhotra talked about the lifelong consequences when a girl child is forced to marry. “Her odds of finishing school decrease while her odds of being abused by her husband and suffering complications during pregnancy increase,” Anju Malhotra, UNICEF’s principal gender adviser, said in a statement. Anju Malhotra, Unicef's principal gender adviser, said that given the life-changing impact child marriage had on a girl's life, "any reduction is welcome news - but we've got a long way to go". While south Asia has led the way on reducing child marriage over the last decade, the global burden of child marriage is shifting to sub-Saharan Africa, where rates of progress need to be scaled up dramatically to offset population growth. UNICEF said there has also been a shift in where the highest number of child brides are located, with close to one-third of all the most recently married child brides globally now in sub-Saharan Africa, compared to one in five a decade ago. UNICEF estimates that 12 million girls a year are married globally, and says more is needed to end the practice by 2030 - the target set under the U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals.
A UNICEF report says that 20% of girls under 18 are married, compared to 25% ten years ago, with an estimated 25 million marriages having been prevented in the past decade.