As Valentine’s Day gets global attention, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has reiterated the call for an end to child marriage.

Development Diaries reports that the United Nations (UN) agency has been marking Valentine’s Day since 2015 by calling on the international community to say ‘I Don’t’ to show support for girls the world over who say ‘I do’ against their will.

For instance, Nigeria’s rates of child marriage are some of the highest in Africa.

SDG Five: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

In fact, data from the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) shows that more than 20 million girls and women were married in the country as children.

Similarly, figures from Girls Not Brides show that 43 percent of girls in Nigeria are married before their 18th birthday and 16 percent are married before the age of 15.

Child marriage has deep and lasting impacts on women throughout their lives, as it prevents them from making their own life choices, disrupts their education, subjects them to violence and discrimination, and denies their full participation in economic, political, and social life.

‘Child marriage is a human rights violation that denies a girl her bodily autonomy. It marks the end of childhood and choice when marriage should be the dawn of a new beginning. It is a picture of dashed dreams when marriage should be a symbol of hope’, the UNFPA wrote in a press statement.

Nigeria adopted the CRA in 2003 in line with the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.

However, not all the states in Africa’s most populous nation have domesticated the law.

We call on the governments in Nigeria to ensure full implementation of the Child Rights Act (CRA).

Photo source: DFID