State of World Population 2012 - Country Page List - UNFPA

State-run family planning programmes. Some of
these individuals may seek to prevent unintended
pregnancies. For example, men who have sex
with men and bisexuals may choose to engage
in heterosexual sex without wishing to have
children. In other situations, lesbians and gay
men may wish to plan families. Sexual violence
against people based on their perceived or actual
sexual orientation makes women vulnerable to
unintended pregnancy as a result of rape, requiring
access to emergency contraception.
Child brides. Despite declines in rates of early
marriage, the practice of marrying girls before
the age of 18—the internationally agreed age of
adulthood—remains widespread sub-Saharan
Africa and South Asia. It remains relatively
uncommon for young men. Estimates suggest
that 34 per cent of women between the ages of
20 and 24 in developing countries were married
or in a union before their eighteenth birthday.
In 2010, this was equivalent to almost 67 million
women. Social expectations, including the
expectation that girls will marry early, shape girls’
sexual behaviour, compromising their school
performance, and making them vulnerable to
early marriage.
Child marriage leads to the initiation of sexual
activity during a period when girls know little
about their bodies, their sexual and reproductive
health, and their right to family planning. Child
wives are also under intense social pressure to
prove their fertility, which makes them more likely
to have early and closely-spaced pregnancies.
Even when child wives have accurate, comprehensive
knowledge about how to prevent early
t
Nujoud, Sana'a,
Yemen, was married
to her husband, more
than 20 years her
senior, when she was
only 10 years old. They
are now divorced.
©VII/Stephanie Sinclair
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