Giving Compass' Take:

• Two Ethiopian girls, Selenat and Bayush, share their stories of being forced to marry when they were children, and how education can help give girls like them opportunities for a better life.

• What is the international aid community doing to address the issue of child marriage, in Ethiopia and elsewhere? How can we support more programs such as the UK-funded Finote Hiwot ("Pathway to Life"), mentioned here in connection to Bayush?

• Here's more about the far-reaching economic impacts of child marriage.

“I was really young on my wedding day. And I didn’t know we’d have sex that night. I thought my husband would wait for me to grow up, that he would wait for the right time.”

For girls like Selenat, who got married when she was 13, child marriage marks the beginning of frequent and unprotected sex which often leads to an early and risky first pregnancy ...

Ethiopia has one of the highest rates of early marriage in sub-Saharan Africa. In the Amhara region  —  where Selenat lives  —  the average age is 14.7 years.

In the last decade 58 million girls in developing countries  —  that’s 1 in 3  —  have been married before they were 18.

Meet Bayush. She got married when she was 3.

Bayush continued to live with her mom and dad after the wedding and her husband and new family visited for events. She was due to move in with her husband when she was about 8 or 9-years-old, but at the age of 7, Bayush asked to go to school.

It was this request that led to the end of her marriage. Bayush’s father refused to send her to school but her brother intervened  —  he offered to pay the school fees if Bayush could stay in the family home. Eventually, Bayush’s father agreed. Bayush’s relationship with her husband ended.

Read the full article about child marriage in Ethiopia at Global Citizen (via the Department for International Development).