Five pages of statistics capped by five lines detailing a solution, not one word explaining why this is any of "our" (Meaning of course White peoples) business much less our problem.
If the role of the AFA is to promote the ideals of "traditional" marriage then the idea of there being some arbitrary but universal age limit imposed upon brides and grooms in spite of the dramatic racially based differences in child development and adult lifestyles is, dare I say it, White supremacy.
Fourteen or fifteen is not too young an age to be married for people with an average life expectancy of 55.

Time to grow to & look at the bigger picture Terri.

What do you reckon? Better pregnant at 15, & a single mother at 16, as is increasingly the case in Europe the US & here, or a bride at 15.

I'm afraid your prejudices are showing in this. Just because you, & many in the western world, were still children at the end of their teens doesn't mean this applies in all cultures.

Just what does a young lady in an agrarian village in India or New Guinea gain by waiting until her 20s to marry.

Perhaps the problem is more with western mothers wanting to keep their progeny as children long after they should be off doing something useful.

The problem is easily solved. Stop defining ordinary consensual human behaviour as abusive. Stop defining someone as a "child" for purposes of a discussion of sexuality merely because they are under an arbitrary politically-determined one-size-fits-all age limit of 18. Recognise that the age of consent bears no relation to any identifiable biological stage of development. Recognise that the claim that consensual sex is somehow intrinsically physically or emotionally damaging is complete nonsense. Recognise that, by your method, if the State defined a child as anyone under 20 or 21, as has been the case in many places in history, all of a sudden you'd be squarking about an epidemic of "child sex abuse" even when you're talking about married couples who already have children. Recognise that you don't know better than other people what their values should be. Recognise that all talk of political "empowerment" exalts the use of political force and threats over society's voluntary and peaceable relations. Recognise the blatant racism in what you have said. Recognise that other people's consensual sexual relations are none of your business.

I doubt this author is talking mostly about 15 year old brides, but rather those not yet in their teens who are 'promised' and then 'given' to their much older male husbands.

So, to me, this issue is not about race, culture or religion, but about paedophilia on a grand scale.

It is a terrible situation that 'developed' countries should try all they can to put pressure on those counties that allow practices like this to stamp it out.

What else would you expect in India, which also boosts the rape capital of the world.
All of these little kids are real people, with dreams, hopes and expectations, which never ever, dare I say, become being the sex slaves of men, with absolutely no moral scruples whatsoever!
And reportedly around 40% of these barely nubile girls, will die in childbirth!
It'd be a different story, I dare say, if it were our own daughters, being taken, forcibly wed, then raped daily, by some dirty old, completely indifferent man?
It may well be common practice here there and virtually everywhere in the dark continent, which can never ever make it right or justifiable!
Any more than criminal rape in Deli can be!
And yes, western women do get pregnant at similar young ages, usually after being lied to and used by a man, with few if any moral scruples! So?
None of that makes anything like the topic under discussion right, except say in the eyes of demonstrably, patently heartless men, or the criminally insane!
We need to ensure these little, immature, often prepubescent girls, get an education, and the right to simply say no! Or not yet?
Or, I am a person, with my own dreams and rightful expectations, not property!
In any event, it should be her personal choice, inclusive of gay marriage?
And isn't all that already enough of a problem for most parents, without force, kidnapping and coercion, becoming or remaining standard practice, or so called custom.
Let them grow up to become Doctors, Lawyers, electricians, mine truck drivers, midwives, vets, pilots, plumbers and Leaders, who as at long last emancipated women, get The Final Say, in who they wed or bed!
Rhrosty.

no suse,
It's all about race and tradition, pedophilia has nothing to do with it from our end it's about our desire to silence batty PWMU types who've yet to grasp the notion that White supremacy over the "darkies" ended sixty years ago.
Articles like this are just an embarrassment in a pluralistic, multicultural society.