( people chanting )

Stephanie: Child marriage occurs

in more than 50 developing countries around the world.

And almost always results

in the girl's removal from school.

What families don't realize

is that by curtailing girl's education,

they're only perpetuating the cycle of poverty.

Still, families do this for a number of reasons.

Perhaps they can't afford to feed

the rest of their children.

It can create family alliances

and it often settles debts.

Early marriage often results in abusive

and even deadly consequences.

( bells ringing )

I first ran into this issue in Afghanistan in 2003.

I was doing a story on the burn ward

in Herat, Afghanistan.

There several girls had set themselves on fire

and I didn't understand why they would do that.

As a Westerner, as someone who

just hadn't had anything personal in my life

that was so bad that I would want to do that,

and then I met this young girl, Marzia.

She was 15 years old and turned out,

she had been married at the age of nine.

She had set herself on fire

because she broke her husband's television set

and obviously was so fearful of reaction

by him or the family

that she decided to set herself on fire,

and really that's a suicide attempt.

While I was in the burn ward,

I met several girls who... They all gave different reasons

for why they would do this.

Like someone didn't make the tea hot enough.

It wasn't reasons that I could comprehend.

The more I researched about their lives,

I learned that more than half of those girls

were married underage.

Now, I don't believe that's the only reason

why those girls did that

but at the same time,

it was a common denominator I couldn't deny.

I wanted to look at the issues

that would lead to such a horrific act.

I felt it was a bit irresponsible actually

as a photojournalist,

the journalist part being important,

to just show this end result.

I started looking at the issue of underage marriage,

something I had never encountered before like this.

I had the great fortune to meet Malalai Kakar

and she was a police officer in Kandahar.

Just a powerhouse, really amazing woman.

She had been working with...

in the police department for more than 20 years,

even under the Taliban,

only working on women's issues.

I told her what I was working on and she said,

"Stephanie, this is impossible.

You're never going to

photograph a wedding here in Afghanistan."

She's like, "I don't even know

if I can even get you anything like this."

She's like, "It happens all the time

but I don't know if I can get you this," and I said "okay."

Then I went back to the hotel

and she called me that afternoon.

She's like, "Stephanie, get over here."

She had this young girl Jamila,

which actually means beautiful in Arabic,

but this young girl Jamila, she was 15 years old.

She had been stabbed by her husband.

This is her husband there.

She already had 2 kids

and she had just been trying to visit her mother

without his permission.

I asked Malalai,

I said, "What's going to happen to this man?"

And she said, "Nothing."

She kind of scoffed

and then that's when she said,

"Men are kings here."

Unfortunately she was the one

who was later murdered by the Taliban.

Having worked in the Middle East for a long time,

I really wanted to make sure this wasn't something

that was just against one religious practice.

It's not meant to be against any religion, religious practice,

but I didn't want to single out one,

and so, I went looking in different countries

and cultures as well.

This series of photographs is from Nepal.

And this is a village called the Kagati Village

and it's just only 30 minutes outside of Kathmandu.

This village is known for practicing this. There is a day...

It's not Akha Teej, which they do in India,

but it's a different auspicious day

where a lot of girls are married on the same day.

I was able to see several of these young marriages.

The girls are usually married between 13 and 16.

It was very difficult to get access to.

In a lot of cases I showed them

some of the other pictures that I had done before

and I wanted them to know that I wasn't ...

You know, even though... I mean, I was focusing,

specifically in the beginning of the project,

on kind of the harmful repercussions

because I wanted that message to get out,

but at the same time

I wanted to show the cultures of the weddings

and the beauty in these cultures,

and that was one of the reasons

why I actually wanted to show the weddings themselves

because you see all these beautiful colors.

There are some really beautiful traditions.

One thing that I learned

was that some of the people in these weddings

that were participating,

were actually against the practice

but they were walking a fine line

between trying to like speak out

but also they were part of the culture.

They wanted to help me out

and help be their voice.

I also went to Ethiopia

where they have a strong Christian population.

In January there's a lot of weddings

up in the Amhara District,

which is where it's most predominant in Ethiopia.

I went to several weddings there

and this one was of a young girl.

I think she was 14, Layulim.

Here they actually drape the sheet over her head

to take her to her husband's house.

That's when they were taking her.

Actually she was one of the girls

who didn't mind that she was getting married.

She thought she was gonna have a better life.

She wasn't against her marriage

but they were taking her to the house

and I asked why is she covered up like that?

She said, "Well, we just wanna make sure

that if she escapes, she can't find her way home,

so she'll have to come back."

This is the first time that I actually was involved

in the stopping of a wedding.

In this situation, the mother came over

and she said to my translator

that this girl was gonna get married that week.

She asked us if we could stop it and I said,

"I really don't know."

That's not my job to do that,

it's not my position as a foreigner.

Not even as a journalist but as a foreigner

and I said, "But, if you want to discuss it with the sheikh...

And we have our government minder as well.

"If you want to discuss it

and tell them what you learned, then you can."

That's what she did.

They made a decision.

Even the government minder made a decision

to go talk to the head of the hospital,

not so far away,

and they came back and they talked to the village about

the physical consequences of early marriage

and they ended up stopping this particular wedding.

This is a young girl who was early 20's

and already had all those children.

This is a young girl named Asia

and she was 14 and already had 2 children.

She was still bleeding from her pregnancy.

She didn't know what was going on with her body

and that was one of the scariest situations

is them not knowing what's going on with their bodies

and why things are happening to them.

Yemen is one of the places where it's most predominant.

It's not as reported on

because it's harder to get statistics

and whatnot from.

But an amazing situation - I went to one village in Hajjah

and I said, "Can you show me

where there are some young girls

who are married underage?"

All of a sudden all these girls come in

and I was like, "Wow, I was expecting like two."

All these girls were married.

A couple of them had children.

Most of them were about 15, 16.

Most of them were not in school or had never been in school

and I asked them why hadn't they gone,

and they said, "Because there's no female teachers."

When you have a culture like this,

where if you don't have girls,

who are educated enough to become teachers,

then how do you put female teachers

in these rural areas.

Because this isn't Sanaa.

This isn't even Hodeidah.

This is like the rural village areas.

And so, it's hard to change a culture,

cultural practices where...

There's nothing for them to do but get married

if they're not educated to do anything else.

It was kind of a catch-22

and I felt that that was an important part of this story.

Thank you.

( audience clapping )

Cynthia: I started in India in my field work

because it is the case of course

that this happens a great deal in India

as well as other countries, and India

being one of the most populous countries on the planet.

There's a whole area in Northern India,

the state of Rajasthan,

where this practice is more widespread

than anywhere else concentrated in India,

although it does take place all over India.

And in particular,

there is a season in India called Akha Teej,

which it's not specifically marriages

that are regarded as auspicious,

as we came to learn during Akha Teej.

All new enterprises including business enterprises

are thought to have a good start,

if they take place during this set of

religious and astrological holidays in Akha Teej.

So I first went...

Stephanie and I didn't connected until the 2nd trip.

I first went and spent a lot of time

just in the field, as Stephanie says,

just talking to people

and coming to understand how extraordinary,

how extraordinarily complicated this is.

Here's something that we all sort of know in the abstract,

but it takes a very different reality

when you're in India.

Many, many of the marriages in India

are arranged marriages.

It remains to this day the most common way

for marriage to occur in India,

for young men and young women.

So the notion that there is

some independent right for a woman or a girl

to select who she's gonna marry, is regarded

in many of the most enlightened families in India

as just nonsensical

because that's not the way you do it.

A marriage, Indians would say to me

of all educational levels,

is a joining of two families.

It's not two, excuse me,

two foolish young people in love with each other

deciding to get married.

There's so very much more at stake.

So that goes out the door right away.