About the Stories

The idea for this photo essay grew directly out of ICRW's years of research on the state of adolescent health and well-being in developing countries—particularly in India and Nepal.

With each successive project, child marriage emerged as the pivotal event in a young girl's life that would signal for her a robust, productive, and more prosperous future—or a future marked by ill-health, limited opportunity, sometimes violence, and most often, poverty.

Many of the reflections, comments, and stories about child marriage you will read here, were collected during the course of ICRW's research. In preparation for this essay, ICRW research partner, the Institute of Health Management, Pachod, India, identified girls from their Life Skills programs who were willing to provide more in-depth commentary on their life situations—and coordinated the collection of their stories and images.

The Bangladesh stories are taken from longer case studies collected during the course of an ongoing research project of the Academy for Educational Development's Empowerment of Women Research Program. The names of the girls have been changed to protect their privacy.

The Africa stories and pictures were contributed by individuals eager to share their tales in the hope of preventing other girls from sharing their fate. They came to us from a variety of sources with the assistance of the Adolescent Health and Information Project (AHIP), in Nigeria; the Forum on Marriage and the Rights of Women and Girls; the International Rescue Committee refugee Resettlement Center, Baltimore, MD; Malienne Pour Le Suivi et L'Orientation des Pratiques Traditionelles (AMSOPT), Mali; and Governess Films, producers of "Love, Labor, Loss," a forthcoming film on obstetric fistula.