Five-year-old Rajani is roused from her sleep long after midnight and carried to her wedding by her uncleIt's like institutionalised paedophelia - girls as young as five in India, Yemen, Ethopia and Afghanistan are being married off in secret weddings.
Many are raped and have a low life expectancy due to the number of children they carry at such a young age.
In Afghanistan, Ethiopia and other countries with high early marriage rates, the husbands may be young men or middle-aged widowers or abductors who rape first and claim their victims as wives afterwards, The Daily Mail reports.
Some of these marriages are business transactions or to resolve a family feud.
It is estimated that every year, ten to 12 million girls in the developing world are married off.
In India, the girls will typically be attached to boys four or five years older.
They should be playing hide and seek or skipping, but instead these youngsters have been forced to grow up before they have even reached puberty.
"Whenever I saw him, I hid. I hated to see him"
Tahani was just six years old when she she married Majed, 25.
The young wife posed for this portrait with former classmate Ghada, also a child bride, outside their mountain home in Hajjah
The whole rationale behind this practice is it is as an appropriate way for a young woman to grow up when the alternative is the risk she loses her virginity to someone besides a husband.
Three years ago, the case of Nujood Ali caught the world's attention.
The ten-year-old Yemeni girl managed to escape her home and made her way to a courthouse to request a divorce from the man in his 30s her father had forced her to marry and who beat her.
She became the poster girl for children in her position around the world and a recent book, translated into 30 languages - I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced.
She is now back with her family and has returned to school.
In another case in Yemen, it was discovered that a ten-year-old girl Ayesha had been married off to a 50-year-old man.
The journalists were told by her sister Fatima that 'little Ayesha screamed when she saw the man she was to marry'.
Someone alerted the police, but Ayesha's father ordered her to put on high heels to look taller and a veil to hide her face.
He warned that if he was sent to jail, he would kill Ayesha when he got out. The police left without troubling anyone and Ayesha now lived in a village two hours away with her husband.
"She has a mobile phone,' Fatima said. 'Every day, she calls me and cries,"said Fatima.
Images: National Geographic
Warm Regard, Sara Pandian
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