Giving Compass' Take:

• Child marriage compromises a girl’s development by resulting in early pregnancy and social isolation, interrupting her schooling, limiting her opportunities for a career and placing her at increased risk of domestic violence. Global Citizen takes a look at the ways we've made progress.

• What other collective efforts can we take to end this global issue?

• Learn how the government needs to intervene more to help end child marriage. 

Every year, 12 million girls are married before the age of 18. That’s nearly one girl every two seconds, forced to grow up too soon.

But 2018 brought with it some encouraging news. Although we still have a long way to go to end the practice for good, UNICEF reported that global rates of child marriage are declining, with 25 million child marriages averted over the last decade.

And the good news didn’t end there. Here are seven more ways the world got closer to ending child marriage this year:

  1. Two US states outlawed child marriage
  2. Naomi Campbell VOWed to end child marriage
  3. Governments moved to raise the age
  4. A child marriage activist was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People
  5. We saw the biggest gathering of child marriage activists ever
  6. Ending child marriage? There’s an app for that
  7. A Tanzanian girls' rights activist won the UN Human Rights Prize

Read the full article on ending child marriage by Charlotte Rose at Global Citizen.