Fifteen percent of all marriages in Egypt are child marriages, announced Egypt’s Minister of Population Hala Youssef on Thursday. Despite Egypt changing the legal age of marriage to 18 in 2008, child marriage continues across the country and particularly in underprivileged areas, said Youssef. According to a study published by the National Council for Women in 2013, 22 percent of girls are married before the age of eighteen. Following the new revelations, Egypt’s Population Minister announced that the government, in cooperation with the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), would commence a new study that would determine the scale of child marriages in Giza, Assuit, Sohag and Sharqia. Minister Youssef said that this move would allow the state to effectively tackle child marriages, particularly since child marriages impede women’s and children’s rights. Abuse According to a 2001 study, 29 percent of married children have been beaten by their husbands (or others) and of these children, 41 percent have been beaten during pregnancy. A more recent study in 2014 by the American University in Cairo’s Social Research Center, in partnership with the Ford Foundation, found that 27 percent of…
