Writes Demeter, LUDCI.eu Editorial team

It’s a sunny Thursday afternoon. Kids can be heard laughing and playing in backyards throughout various neighbourhoods. In one of those, in the backroom of a church, Maria’s mother gently places a tiara on her perfectly coiffed hair and smiles at her little girl. She then takes a dingy brown teddy bear from her hands and replaces it with a bouquet of gardenias picked from their garden – a garden that Maria was playing in just two days ago when she celebrated her 10th birthday.

Maria stands up, tears in her eyes, and a death grip on the bouquet. She does not understand why she has to do this but her mother insisted that this is what good little girls do. She readies herself to walk down the aisle to her husband-to-be, 45-year-old Justin Burns.

This is not a movie. Neither is it the beginning of a gory fictional story. Maria has, in fact, become another child bride.

According to UNICEF, child marriage refers to any formal marriage or informal union between a child under the age of 18 and an adult or another child. 12 million girls under 18 years are married each year and 650 million alive today were married as children. While the pr...

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