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Child Rights · Nationwide
Two million child brides: what the marriage data shows
UNICEF figures put around 600,000 of them as married before the age of fifteen, with the highest rates in the north.
1 January 2021
UNICEF's Ghana profile, drawing on national demographic and cluster survey data, records roughly two million child brides in Ghana, including about 600,000 married before they turned fifteen.
Prevalence is highest in the northern regions, and it tracks closely with poverty, distance from school and the absence of birth registration.
Ghana's Children's Act sets the minimum age of marriage at eighteen. The gap between that provision and the survey data is the whole problem.
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