“You'll probably read this article and feel extremely angry as a woman ; but if you're reading this and you aren't angry, then maybe you are not human.”

I saw a video of a little girl dressed in gold. Her eyes were rimmed with kohl, her lips painted red, her henna still fresh; but she couldn’t have been older than eleven. She looked terrified, standing beside a man who could have been her father, maybe even her grandfather. People were clapping. Someone shouted “Masha’Allah.”

I felt something inside me snap.

The caption read: “Another beautiful wedding in Somalia.”

And that’s when I realized we are living in a world where men marry children, and the world claps.

The Horror We Choose Not to See

In Somalia, public outrage erupted when lawmakers attempted to introduce a bill setting the legal marriage age at eighteen. To many of us, that sounds like progress. But to some Somali men, it sounded like oppression. They poured into the streets, shouting that the law “contradicted Islam” and infringed on their “rights” as men and guardians.

Imagine old men fighting for the right to marry little girls. One would think they have successful solved all the problems in their country. Because clearly, unemployment is at zero, healthcare is flawless, and every child has access to quality education.

Clearly, Somalia has conquered poverty, terrorism, and hunger; so naturally, the next pressing national emergency must be protecting the male right to marry children. It’s almost laughable if it weren’t so disgusting. How can men who have failed to fix broken economies, feed their families, or keep their daughters safe, suddenly rise with so much energy to defend something so vile?

The irony is deafening; they are not fighting for justice, progress, or equality; they are fighting for their entitlement to control and consume innocence.

And while they scream on the streets about “their rights,” little girls somewhere are being stripped of theirs. Somewhere, an eleven-year-old is sitting quietly in a corner, her tiny hands decorated with henna, her heart pounding in confusion, her future sealed in silence. She doesn’t even understand what marriage means only that the adults around her are smiling, and she is expected to obey.

These men, who parade themselves as protectors of morality, have become the architects of generational trauma. And the world? The world scrolls past, maybe clicks “angry” on a post, then moves on, forgetting that these are not statistics; they are children whose laughter has been traded for lifelong suffering.

According to UNICEF (2024), about 45% of Somali girls are married before the age of 18, and nearly 8% before 15. The practice, deeply rooted in poverty and patriarchal control, continues largely unchecked. Girls are seen not as children, but as property, bargaining chips for family alliances, or means of economic survival.

Somalia isn’t alone. Across Africa, the stories repeat with frightening consistency. In Niger, 76% of girls are married before 18, the highest rate in the world. In Chad, it’s 67%. In northern Nigeria, reports from Girls Not Brides show that about 43% of girls marry before 18, with the rate reaching up to 78% in some rural communities.

We call these statistics, but they are really funerals disguised as numbers.

Behind every percentage is a child robbed of play, a classroom seat left empty, a heartbeat that will one day break from exhaustion or childbirth.

Patriarchy, Religion, and the Mask of Tradition

The defenders of this horror often hide behind the sacred cloak of religion. They say, “It is allowed.” They say, “Our ancestors did it.” They say, “It is our culture.”

But patriarchy has always known how to disguise its cruelty. It twists scripture and tradition to sanctify its dominance. It knows how to call oppression “virtue,” and rape “marriage.”

When Somalia’s parliament debated the Sexual Intercourse Related Crimes Bill in 2020 — a bill meant to protect women and criminalize rape — it was replaced by a new draft that allowed marriage once “a girl reaches puberty.” The United Nations, Amnesty International, and women’s rights groups condemned it as one of the most dangerous bills for women in modern history.

It didn’t matter. Some men still cheered it.

Let’s call this what it is: a patriarchal war on girlhood.

Religion is not the villain here; the interpretation of it is. True faith, in any form, values justice, compassion, and protection of the vulnerable. What these men preach is not faith, it is entitlement.

They fear the educated girl. They fear the woman who can say no. They fear the generation that will no longer be silent. So they shrink the battlefield to the bodies of little girls, because that’s where their control feels safest.

But if your sense of manhood depends on the submission of a child, then what you practice is not religion, it is rot.

The Cost of Silence

Let’s talk about what happens after the wedding.

She wakes up next to a man old enough to be her father. Her body aches. Her dreams vanish. She no longer goes to school. Her books are replaced with baby clothes.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that pregnancy and childbirth complications are the leading cause of death among girls aged 15–19 in developing countries. In Somalia and Nigeria, teenage pregnancy rates are among the highest in the world. Imagine what happens to those who are even younger.

The girl who should still be playing with dolls now carries one on her back. The girl who should be learning mathematics is instead calculating how to survive another day of marital rape.

According to a 2023 UNFPA report, child brides face domestic violence at rates 80% higher than adult women. Many suffer from obstetric fistula, a condition caused by prolonged obstructed labor, which leaves them incontinent and socially ostracized.

These girls are abandoned by society twice: first when they are married off, and again when they break.

Her story never made headlines. It was just another casualty of cultural convenience.

Because in places where girls’ lives are disposable, their deaths are called “tradition.”

We call it marriage. But let’s name it properly: state-sanctioned child abuse, justified by silence.

And silence, my dear sisters, is patriarchy’s favorite language.

The Feminist Rage the World Needs

Every woman should be angry.
And these men involved should be ashamed.

Because this isn’t a “Somali issue.” It is an African wound. It is a global disease that thrives wherever men believe their masculinity depends on women’s submission.

In Nigeria, some clerics still argue that prohibiting child marriage goes against Islam — despite the fact that countless Muslim-majority nations like Morocco, Tunisia, and Indonesia have outlawed it. In 2013, a Nigerian senator publicly defended his marriage to a 13-year-old girl by claiming that “puberty equals maturity.”

Puberty does not equal consent. And certainly, consent given under pressure or ignorance is not real consent at all.

Across Africa, more than 125 million women and girls alive today were married before 18, according to the African Union Campaign to End Child Marriage. UNICEF estimates that if current trends continue, 10 million more girls will become child brides by 2030.

The math of patriarchy is simple: for every empowered woman, ten more girls must be silenced.

That is why feminism remains necessary — because feminism demands we look at the blood, not the beauty, of these weddings.

To be a feminist in Africa is to live constantly enraged. It is to see oppression disguised as custom, to hear silence passed off as obedience, and to feel your stomach knot when a child’s wedding video goes viral and people call it “beautiful.”

We must teach our daughters to stay angr, and our sons to be better.

We need laws, yes. But laws without cultural shift are like flowers in a desert; beautiful, but unsustained. We need education, storytelling, and accountability.

We need imams and pastors who will preach protection, not possession.
We need mothers who will stop offering their daughters as solutions to poverty.
We need governments that stop pretending this is a private matter.

And above all, we need feminist rage; not the kind that destroys, but the kind that awakens.

When “Consent” is a Lie

Let’s be brutally honest: an eleven-year-old cannot consent. Same way a fifteen-year old cannot and if you have an issue with this, you should get yourself checked.

You can dress her up, you can call it a union, you can parade her around in gold; but it’s still coercion, still exploitation, still a crime.

When a grown man stands before a cleric and says “I do” to a child, what he’s really saying is “I crave control more than companionship.”

This is not marriage; it is legalized rape.

These girls are told they “belong” to their husbands. They are taught to obey, to endure, to never speak. And by the time they realize what was taken from them, the world has already moved on.

Consent is not just about saying yes; it’s about understanding what yes means. A child cannot understand the meaning of marriage, sex, motherhood, or submission.

If the law cannot recognize that, then the law is broken.

The Poverty Trap and the Cycle of Betrayal

We cannot ignore the economic roots of this issue. Poverty, ignorance, and insecurity feed the culture of child marriage.

In communities where education is a luxury and survival is a daily struggle, a daughter becomes a commodity; one less mouth to feed, one more dowry to collect.

But this short-term solution costs entire generations their future. Studies by the World Bank show that ending child marriage could generate trillions of dollars in economic benefits globally by 2030. Every additional year of schooling for a girl increases her future earnings by 10–20%.

So when a father marries off his eleven-year-old, he doesn’t just betray his daughter; he betrays his nation.

A society that educates its girls thrives. A society that marries them off dies in silence.

A Call to Humanity

I am writing this with trembling hands and tears burning behind my eyes. I am angry. I am exhausted. I am heartbroken.

Because every time I open social media, there’s a new story; a child married to a man three times her age, a government debating whether girls deserve protection, and a world that remains disturbingly quiet.

When will this end?

When will humanity stop dressing oppression in cultural robes?

When will men understand that protecting children is not “Western influence” — it’s basic human decency?

And when will women stop normalizing their pain and passing it down like inheritance?

Every time we call a child a “bride,” we betray her.
Every time we stay silent, we become complicit.

If you are a woman reading this and you are not angry, then you have forgotten what it means to be human.
If you are a man reading this and you feel defensive, then ask yourself — why?

Because the truth is simple: no religion, no culture, no excuse justifies the marriage of a child.

This is not about faith. It’s about power. And it’s about time we took that power back.

And to the Little Girls who never got to be girls,

To the eleven-year-old in gold,
To the twelve-year-old who bled,
To the countless unnamed daughters of silence,
I see you. I am angry for you. I am fighting for you.

You deserved laughter, not labour.
You deserved crayons, not contractions.
You deserved to be children, not wives.

One day, the world will look back and call this what it truly is not marriage, but a crime against childhood.

Until then, I will write, I will shout, and I will never stop being angry.

Because anger is not a weakness; it is the flame that keeps justice alive.

And if my words make even one person uncomfortable, then maybe, just maybe, humanity still has a chance.

Every time a child bride is made, humanity loses its soul.