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The story of a child bride is not reserved for history books; it is something that is happening even today. According to the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit, the South Asian region has one of the highest numbers of child marriages, second only to sub Saharan Africa. Invariably, the region has a high maternal mortality rate.
In Bangladesh, according to UNICEF's State of the World's Children 2009 report, 64% girls get married before they reach the age of 18 whereas 57 percent of girls are married by age 15. 7 percent of them get married before the age of 10. As a result, both maternal and child mortality rates are increasing in the country. Child brides face high risk of abuse, rape, contracting HIV/AIDS and most importantly dying in childbirth. And there are numbers to prove it. UN Millennium Development Goals report reported 536,000 maternal deaths last year, out of which 70,000 were adolescents, making pregnancy the leading cause of death for girls age 14-19.World-wide 82 million girls are child brides. Reasons for high maternal mortality in Bangladesh are directly linked with early marriages. With early marriage comes early pregnancy. One-third of teenage girls aged 15 to 19 are mothers or pregnant in the country today according to the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) 2007, released in March 2009. A third of women are either pregnant or mothers by age 20, and this proportion is not declining, the report observed. The BDHS 2007 shows that the median age at marriage for women is 16.4 years, which is 18 months below the legal minimum age. Research shows that teenage mothers in Bangladesh are at a five times higher risk than older mothers to suffer from obstructed delivery and other severe childbirth-and pregnancy-related complications, which results in higher morbidity and mortality for them while babies born to mothers younger than 14 are 50% more likely to die than babies born to mothers older than 20. The reasons that make early marriages so common in Bangladesh vary from age-old belief to get a daughter married as soon as she reaches puberty to other financial concerns. Parents encourage early marriage out of fear that the dowry price will increase as their daughter ages. Young girls are often regarded as an economic burden to their families; marrying them off at a very early age is seen as reducing that burden. It is also a way to ensure that their daughters are “protected” from sexual abuse or illicit sexual contact, and making them financially more secure. Apart from higher maternal mortality of young mothers in the country, early marriages also results in higher drop out rates of young girls from schools. This stops them from hiring education. Lower schooling level therefore results in lower social status in their husband's families, less reproductive control and domestic violence. Changing the perceived lack of social and economic value of girls is a crucial part of the solution. Continued law reform and enforcement, free and full consent by girls, birth and marriage registration, raising community awareness, equitable primary school enrollment, and increased international cooperation are necessary to end this appalling violation of human rights in the country. Law enforcement has a role to play in Bangladesh where child marriage is against the law. There is a need to address the practice which is epidemic in Bangladesh and is growing with time. 2009 marks the 20th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The United Nations Human Rights Council recently adopted a resolution recognising preventable maternal death as a human rights violation and addressed child marriage within the problem. It has set a distinct goal to end child marriage a priority. There is a need to create awareness about the implications of early marriages in Bangladesh. Child brides deserve to have a childhood. 
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