How can Child Marriage be reduced in Afghanistan?

Early marriage is one of the main issues that victimize girls between the age of 7 – 18 years old. Studies indicate that girls are not the only victims of such traditions but boys who also marry at a very young age, suffer from that. There are many factors which cause early marriage phenomena in the Third World countries such as poverty, illiteracy, poor health care, customs, religion etc. Statistics show that the majority of girls who marry under the legal age live in poor countries. Girls who are forced to get married under the legal age, tend to become immediately pregnant, during their pregnancy suffering of malnutrition, access to clean water and shortage of proper health care. Thus, there is a high number of maternal mortality and abortion. Early marriage affects the young mothers from different aspects. For example they are firstly sexually abused and psychologically depressed. Meanwhile early pregnancies is a common issue among those women as they do not have any sexual education, access to contraception and health care system. This paper intends to concentrate on early marriage in Afghanistan, one of the countries with a high rate of early marriage.