A district-wide awareness campaign has been launched in Bajura to end child marriage.

The newly elected people’s representatives, health workers, representatives of the civil society, government employees and local journalists have been trained and mobilised throughout the district to teach people about the ills of child marriage.

Kriti Bhattarai, a campaigner, said the recently elected local level representatives will lead the campaign to combat child marriage. 

Hari Bahadur Rokaya, chairman of Gaumul Rural Municipality, said he will end child marriage in his municipality within a year. 

The health workers and the representatives of the civil society also vowed to make the campaign a success.

As per the 2011 national census,  24,919 women in Bajura married before they reached the age of; of them, 4,000 girls married at the age of 15 or below. Similarly, the data of the District Health Office showed that 662 of the 2,648 pregnant women, who visited local health posts for medical examinations in the fiscal year 2016-2017, were found below 20 years of age. 

According to a 2016 Unicef report,  Nepal is among the top ten countries in the world with the highest rate of child marriage, where one-third of the girls are married before the age of 18.