Philippines takes key step to end child marriages


By AGENCY
  • Family
  • Tuesday, 23 Feb 2021

According to Oxfam, child marriage is most prevalent in the southern region of Mindanao, where Muslims are allowed to have more than one wife, and girls as young as 13 can marry. - FIlepic

Amid cheers, applause and beating drums, a 13-year-old girl is married to a man three times her senior. The ceremony in the southern Philippines goes viral - only days after legislators took a key step to end child marriages in the country.

The bride wore a white traditional wedding dress with gold trimmings and red lipstick, but these could not hide the 35-year gap between her and her groom, a 48-year-old farmer who was married four times before.

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