findmeabride

Why does US have so many child brides? Jump bbc usa child brides media player Angel was 13 when her mother forced her to marry and start a family.

I felt like a slave,’ she says. Jump to media player While many people expect post-traumatic stress disorder to be an issue for returning soldiers, it is far more pervasive in US inner cities. Jump to media player More than 1,000 water systems across the US have drinking water that fails safety standards for lead. BBC’s Aleem Maqbool is exploring health and social issues where the US, the richest country in the world, does not perform well in international rankings. Why do so many US women die giving birth?

Jump to media player While progress has been made to curb death rates in other countries, the US has seen an increase. Jump to media player The US has more citizens who are illiterate than many of its developed counterparts. Why does the US have so many child brides? Angel was 13 when her mother forced her to marry and start a family. I felt like a slave,” she says of her childhood. While countries like Zimbabwe, Malawi and El Salvador have recently banned child marriage, it remains legal in the US – and half of states have no set minimum age below which you cannot get married. More than 200,000 children were married in the US over the past 15 years, new figures have revealed.

Three 10-year-old girls and an 11-year-old boy were among the youngest to wed, under legal loopholes which allow minors to marry in certain circumstances. You can form your own view. At least 207,468 minors married in the US between 2000 and 2015, according to data compiled by Unchained At Last, a group campaigning to abolish child marriage, and investigative documentary series Frontline. The true figure is likely to be much higher because 10 states provided no or incomplete statistics. Fraidy Reiss, the founder of Unchained at Last, said she was “literally shaking” when she first obtained data for New Jersey, where her group is based. Nearly 3,500 children married in the state between 1995 and 2012. Eight-seven per cent of the minors who married across the country between 2000 and 2015 were girls, with the majority either 16 or 17.