Child brides are on the rise in India’s towns and cities – report
June 2, 2017
“There are still large numbers of girls being married in urban areas – one was hoping and thinking that would not exist at all”
NEW DELHI, June 2 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – An increasing number of underage girls in India’s towns and cities are being married off, a study has revealed, challenging long-held assumptions that child marriage in the country is largely a rural phenomenon.
Child marriage is illegal in India, but it is deeply rooted and accepted in society, and remains widespread in parts of the country. Data from the 2011 census shows more than 5 million girls were married before the legal age of 18 – a marginal decrease from 2001.
Yet while the number of underage brides has declined by 0.3 percent in rural areas since 2001, they have increased by 0.7 percent in urban parts, said a report by the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights and the charity Young Lives.
