These pictures - and more - are in the June 2011 issue of National Geographic magazine, or visit www.ngm.nationalgeographic.com
Wide-eyed and haunted, the expressions on these young girls' faces hint at the innocence so cruelly snatched away from them.
They should be playing, learning and enjoying their childhood. But instead these youngsters have been forced to grow up before they have even reached puberty.
Girls as young as five are being married off in secret weddings. It is estimated that every year ten to 12 million girls in the developing world are married off.
'Whenever I saw him, I hid. I hated to see him': Tahani (in pink) was just six years old when she she married Majed, 25. The young wife posed for this portrait with former classmate Ghada, also a child bride, outside their mountain home in Hajjah
In India, the girls will typically be attached to boys four or five years older. In Yemen, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and other countries with high early marriage rates, the husbands may be young men or middle-aged widowers or abductors who rape first and claim their victims as wives afterwards.
Some of these marriages are business transactions or to resolve a family feud.
Forced early marriage thrives in many regions, often in defiance of national laws. Whole communities often prescribe to the notion that it is as an appropriate way for a young woman to grow up when the alternative is the risk she loses her virginity to someone besides a husband.
Well past bedtime: Child marriage might be illegal in India, but this doesn't stop ceremonies taking place in the small hours of the morning - it becomes a secret the whole village keeps, explained one farmer. Here, five-year-old Rajani is roused from her sleep long after midnight and carried to her wedding by her uncle
So young: Barely looking at each other, Rajani and her boy groom are married in front of the sacred fire. According to tradition, the young bride is expected to live at home until puberty, before she is transferred to her husband
Wailing in protest: Surita, 16, cries as she leaves her family home, shielded by a traditional wedding umbrella and carried in a cart to her new husband's village. Early marriage is the norm in her small village in Nepal
in Yemen, it was discovered that a ten-year-old girl Ayesha had been married off to a 50-year-old man.The journalists were told by her sister Fatima that 'little Ayesha screamed when she saw the man she was to marry'.
Someone alerted the police, but Ayesha's father ordered her to put on high heels to look taller and a veil to hide her face.
He warned that if he was sent to jail, he would kill Ayesha when he got out. The police left without troubling anyone and Ayesha now lived in a village two hours away with her husband.
'She has a mobile phone,' Fatima said. 'Every day, she calls me and cries.'
The medical consequences are also extremely serious and in some cases fatal.
One doctor based in the Yemeni capital Sanaa listed some of the medical consequences of forcing girls into sex and childbirth before they are physically mature - ripped vaginal walls and internal ruptures called fistulas which can lead to life-long incontinence.
Girls are often too young to understand the concept of reproduction. The doctor said: 'The nurses start by asking, ''Do you know what's happening?'" Do you understand that this is a baby that has been growing inside of you?''
Few are equipped with the information of how to care for themselves or their babies after childbirth leading to high infant mortality rates.
Wide-eyed and haunted, the expressions on these young girls' faces hint at the innocence so cruelly snatched away from them.
They should be playing, learning and enjoying their childhood. But instead these youngsters have been forced to grow up before they have even reached puberty.
Girls as young as five are being married off in secret weddings. It is estimated that every year ten to 12 million girls in the developing world are married off.
'Whenever I saw him, I hid. I hated to see him': Tahani (in pink) was just six years old when she she married Majed, 25. The young wife posed for this portrait with former classmate Ghada, also a child bride, outside their mountain home in Hajjah
In India, the girls will typically be attached to boys four or five years older. In Yemen, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and other countries with high early marriage rates, the husbands may be young men or middle-aged widowers or abductors who rape first and claim their victims as wives afterwards.
Some of these marriages are business transactions or to resolve a family feud.
Forced early marriage thrives in many regions, often in defiance of national laws. Whole communities often prescribe to the notion that it is as an appropriate way for a young woman to grow up when the alternative is the risk she loses her virginity to someone besides a husband.
Well past bedtime: Child marriage might be illegal in India, but this doesn't stop ceremonies taking place in the small hours of the morning - it becomes a secret the whole village keeps, explained one farmer. Here, five-year-old Rajani is roused from her sleep long after midnight and carried to her wedding by her uncle
So young: Barely looking at each other, Rajani and her boy groom are married in front of the sacred fire. According to tradition, the young bride is expected to live at home until puberty, before she is transferred to her husband
Wailing in protest: Surita, 16, cries as she leaves her family home, shielded by a traditional wedding umbrella and carried in a cart to her new husband's village. Early marriage is the norm in her small village in Nepal
in Yemen, it was discovered that a ten-year-old girl Ayesha had been married off to a 50-year-old man.The journalists were told by her sister Fatima that 'little Ayesha screamed when she saw the man she was to marry'.
Someone alerted the police, but Ayesha's father ordered her to put on high heels to look taller and a veil to hide her face.
He warned that if he was sent to jail, he would kill Ayesha when he got out. The police left without troubling anyone and Ayesha now lived in a village two hours away with her husband.
'She has a mobile phone,' Fatima said. 'Every day, she calls me and cries.'
The medical consequences are also extremely serious and in some cases fatal.
One doctor based in the Yemeni capital Sanaa listed some of the medical consequences of forcing girls into sex and childbirth before they are physically mature - ripped vaginal walls and internal ruptures called fistulas which can lead to life-long incontinence.
Girls are often too young to understand the concept of reproduction. The doctor said: 'The nurses start by asking, ''Do you know what's happening?'" Do you understand that this is a baby that has been growing inside of you?''
Few are equipped with the information of how to care for themselves or their babies after childbirth leading to high infant mortality rates.
