Giving Compass' Take:

• A report by Save The Children discusses the dangers facing young children living in war zones, especially young girls who are at risk of ending up in child marriages. 

• How can countries do to more to protect their younger populations? Why aren't they more of a priority? 

• Read about how child marriages have spiked in Syria from 15% to 36%. 

Like millions of other Syrians, Maha fled her country’s civil war when the violence escalated. She found refuge with her family in Jordan, where she wanted to keep going to school. But at age 12, she was forced to marry a man a decade older, and now she’s pregnant with her first child at the age of 13.

Her childhood ended far too abruptly, according to the nonprofit Save the Children, and she’s not alone.

Every year, 12 million girls are married before their 18th birthdays — nearly one girl every two seconds, according to the campaign group Girls Not Brides.'

But the harms facing children go far beyond forced marriage. In fact, more than 1.2 billion children experience similar “childhood enders” such as poverty, conflict, or severe gender discrimination, Save the Children argues in a report released Wednesday called “The End of Childhood.”

“Most of the world’s children are being robbed of their childhoods and their futures because they’re living in poverty, growing up in war zones, or experiencing discrimination for being girls,” said Carolyn Miles, president and CEO of Save the Children, in a statement.

And while bombs and bullets might seem to be the gravest risk in war zones, the report found that malnutrition, disease, and inadequate health care kill more than 20 times as many children as weapons in conflicts.

Read the full article about childhood poverty by Joe McCarthy at Global Citizen.