Every day, 41,000 girls marry before they are 18 years old. That’s 15 million girls every year. While child marriage can happen to both boys and girls, in most places around the world, the practice mostly affects girls.
Girls like Nafissa* (not her real name), from Niger.
“I stopped (going to) school in order to marry,” says the young teen, “It was because of people’s mentality and their prejudices. I was married during a school break and, before I could return, I became pregnant. After that, I never returned.”
parliamentarian workshop organized by UNICEF where I learned about the different forms of malnutrition that we face. There, I discovered that my country, Cameroon, has an overall stunting prevalence of 32% for children under age five. In other words, one in three children under the age of five is affected. I now know of the devastating effects of malnutrition on the health of families, children and adolescents and consequently on the development of our country. As a parliamentarian, I’ve worked to serve my constituency and set up a community health insurance which helps improve the coverage of vulnerable children and young people. These challenges are our daily reality, but I was surprised to see them highlighted by the President of the World Bank in Washington, DC when I traveled there for the World Bank’s Spring Meetings.
Over the past 15 years, the World Bank Groups’ Community Development Carbon Fund (CDCF) has contributed to reducing over 4 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent and created community co-benefits aligned with sustainable development goals (SDGs) for approximately 17.5 million people. Ecofys, a Navigant company and headquartered in Utrecht, The Netherlands, has supported the Bank’s efforts and recently presented a 
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