Many Primary School Girls in Malawi forced to drop out of school in order to marry

The Education Commission of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Malawi has released figures indicating that more than 27,000 girls dropped out of primary school in the country between 2010 and 2013 due to early marriages. The revelations were made on Saturday on the occasion of the international Day of the Girl Child which is marked on 11th October every year. The Commission warned that unless the trend is reversed, Malawi would not achieve the Millennium Development Goal on universal primary education by the end of 2015. It went further to say that child marriage remains one of the main obstacles to education for young girls in Malawi where many girls are married before they are 18 years old. The country’s official minimum marriage age is 15 years. The Education Commission has called upon faith-based communities and traditional leaders to join it in its campaign to have the minimum age raised to 18 years.