All Child-Brides are Rape Victims

     How many child-brides do you imagine we have, roughly, in this rape-crazy place?
 
     UNICEF and the Brits released a study in London some time back at an international conference on the practice, The Girl Summit. That group studies child-brides and related issues in a long-view effort to bring to a halt female genital mutilation as well as forced-marriage of all kinds, including those victimizing children.
 
     The conference notes that child marriage is most prevalent in South Asia, where about half the world’s child-brides, in a manner of speaking, live, and in sub-Saharan Africa. The good news is that female genital mutilation (a cultural and not any religion’s mandate) is, to an extent, waning, as a result of international pressure and recent legislation in the nations where it persists. Female genital mutilation, is roughly down a third in the past generation or so.
 
      As to How Many?
 
           . There are over 700 million now alive, and of a range of ages, who were child- brides, of whom
 
           . 250 million were married before they were 15.
 
     Is there a reason not to say this is culturally-, nationally-sanctioned rape?
NOTE:  The photo is from the U.S.

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