'I was playing outside when my mother told me I would marry. My life was 廃虚d': Ethiopian child bride, 軍隊d into marriage at 10, 妊娠している at 13 and 未亡人d by 14, on the moment her world changed forever

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Alemtsahye Gebrekidan was 10 when her childhood （機の）カム to an abrupt end. 'I was playing outside and my mum called me inside to the house,' she remembers of the day her world changed forever.

'She said "you're going to marry". I was surprised and I cried but I didn't say anything to them [her parents].' Her wedding, to a boy of 16, took place just two months later.

Shocking though it might seem, her experience is by no means unique. によれば World Health Organisation 人物／姿／数字s, 14.2 million girls under the age of 15 are 軍隊d into marriage each year.

Most come from India, the Middle East, and like Alemtsahye herself, from sub-Saharan Africa - Niger, Chad, the Central African 共和国 and Ethiopia の中で them.

The consequences are appallin g. Along with an education and childhood 削減（する） short, girls 苦しむ a traumatic initiation into 性の 関係s, are put at 危険 of 国内の 暴力／激しさ and STI's, and have the chance of a career or better life taken away.

Worse, many also die in childbirth or from pregnancy-関係のある 複雑化s - the 主要な 原因（となる） of death for girls 老年の between 15 and 19 years old in 発展途上国s, によれば UN 人物／姿／数字s.'

Child marriage is an appalling 違反 of human 権利s and 略奪するs girls of their education, health and long-称する，呼ぶ／期間／用語 prospects,' comments Babatunde Osotimehin, (n)役員／(a)執行力のある director of UNFPA.

'A girl who is married as a child is one whose 可能性のある will not be 実行するd.'

It's a 見解（をとる） with which Alemtsahye agrees. Now 38 and living in London, she says she still feels angry with her parents at times and says her life was '廃虚d' by her 早期に marriage.

'My parents and his parents decided [on the marriage],' she 追加するs. 'I didn't choose.'

Before the 支配する of marriage was raised, Alemtsahye remembers a happy childhood in Ethiopia's northern Tigray 州.

'I was in school,' she remembers, 'although I stopped the school when I was married. I do have happy memories of childhood - it was just eat and play.'

All that ended when it was decided she would marry a boy, who until the day of their wedding, she had never met.

'I didn't know him,' she says. 'I was 承認する when I saw him - he was a child like me. He was upset 同様に, the same like me... he was 16 years old.'

As Alemtsahye's story 明らかにする／漏らすs, girls aren't the only 犠牲者s of 軍隊d marriages, although as Jacqui 追跡（する）, London Director of （選挙などの）運動をするing charity Equality Now makes （疑いを）晴らす, their experience is often far more traumatic.

'Boys do get married young and that is an 問題／発行する that needs to be 演説（する）／住所d,' she explains. 'But the 大多数 of child marriages 伴う／関わる girls.

'Also, boys tend to marry girls same age or younger while girls marry much older men. Boys also aren't taken out of education while girls run the 危険 of 早期に childbirth and all the 複雑化s that brings.'

While Alemtsahye was, at least, given a husband closer to her own age, the wedding meant leaving home, leaving school and beginning life as a 伝統的な Ethiopian wife.

'I was collecting water, 支持を得ようと努めるd and cooking for my husband and the days were like that,' she remembers.

'The water was far away and not 近づく to our house. We would go far, then come 支援する and I would cook for my husband.'

By the time she was 13, Alemtsahye, although still a child herself, had a baby son, Tefsalen, now 25, to care for 同様に.

She remembers the pregnancy and birth as a traumatic time, made worse by the fact that her immature 団体／死体 couldn't 対処する with the physical 需要・要求するs of carrying a baby.

'When I was 妊娠している, it was painful and I cried,' she 解任するs. 'And also when the baby was 配達するd it was so painful because I was a child.'

But if pregnancy was difficult, motherhood was even tougher and made worse by the fact that in 1989, Ethiopia was in the throes of?a vicious civil war.

The 衝突, which 激怒（する）d 断続的に from 1974 until 1991, 結局 left more than 1.4 million dead, の中で them, Alemtsahye's young husband who was just 19 when he was killed fighting with 反逆者／反逆する 軍隊s to 倒す Ethiopia's barbarous Marxist 独裁者, Mengistu あられ／賞賛する Mariam.

'After the baby was born, there was a very bad war, and my husband, they took him, and he was 19 years old and he was dead in the war,' she says, her English わずかに 停止（させる）ing as she remembers.

'I was a 未亡人 at 13 and when [my husband] left me, he left me with a one-year-old baby. It was very hard. Very difficult for me left behind with a baby and still a baby myself.'

And although she hadn't 手配中の，お尋ね者 to marry her husband, Alemtsahye says she still feels sad when she thinks of his short life and how little enjoyment he had.

'I feel sorry for him because he did not enjoy his life,' she says. 'He married young and finished in a war that ended his life. When I see his son, I いつかs cry.'

Left alone with only her son, Alemtsahye was left 攻撃を受けやすい and soon fell into the 手渡すs of traffickers, tempted by 約束s of a better life abroad.

Leaving her son with her mother, she travelled to Egypt where she worked as an 未払いの 国内の servant.

But just two months after arriving, more traffickers appeared - this time 約束ing her a new life in the UK.

'I was 密輸するd to London by Arab people,' she explains. 'They said: "you are working with us and we will take you to London". They brought me and then they left me here.'

Still just 16-years-old, the former child bride was now an 亡命 探検者, 最初 placed with a foster family because of her 青年 but 速く moved to a tiny flat of her own.

She went 支援する to school and learned English and now has 始める，決める up a charity which 目的（とする）s to help former child brides from Ethiopia and is part of Girls Not Brides - a 全世界の 網状組織 of NGOs working to end child marriage.

Her son, now 25, lives in the Ethiopian 資本／首都, Addis Ababa, and grew up with his grandparents, only seeing his mother during her 時折の visits home.

'It was so hard, very difficult,' she says 率直に. 'I was thinking how to bring him to live with me [in London] but I can't bring him now because he's in his 20s. I tried last year and they said no.'

Did she ever worry that her parents might try to marry him off at a young age 同様に? If they had, says Alemtsahye, she would have 設立する a way to stop the wedding.