Problem: Early marriage, such as this one taking place in Malawi, are the fate 14.2 million girls every year
Alemtsahye Gebrekidan was 10 when her childhood came to an abrupt end. 'I was playing outside and my mum called me inside to the house,' she remembers of the day her world changed forever.
'She said "you're going to marry". I was surprised and I cried but I didn't say anything to them [her parents].' Her wedding, to a boy of 16, took place just two months later.
Shocking but according to World Health Organisation figures, 14.2 million girls under the age of 15 are forced into marriage each year. Most come from India, the Middle East, and like Alemtsahye herself, from sub-Saharan Africa - Niger, Chad, the Central African Republic and Ethiopia among them.The consequences are appalling. Along with an education and childhood cut short, girls suffer a traumatic initiation into sexual relationships, are put at risk of domestic violence and STI's, and have the chance of a career or better life taken away.
Worse, many also die in childbirth or from pregnancy-related complications.
'A girl who is married as a child is one whose potential will not be fulfilled. My parents and his parents decided [on the marriage],' she adds. 'I didn't choose. I was in school,' she remembers, 'although I stopped the school when I was married. I do have happy memories of childhood - it was just eat and play.
I didn't know him,' she says. 'I was OK when I saw him - he was a child like me. He was upset as well, the same like me... he was 16 years old. I was collecting water, wood and cooking for my husband and the days were like that,' she remembers.
A child bride is pictured in Tanzania. Alemtsayhe Gebrekidan has told of how she suffered a similar fate when she married age 10
The water was far away and not near to our house. We would go far, then come back and I would cook for my husband. When I was pregnant, it was painful and I cried,' she recalls. 'And also when the baby was delivered it was so painful because I was a child.
After the baby was born, there was a very bad war, and my husband, they took him, and he was 19 years old and he was dead in the war,' she says, her English slightly halting as she remembers. I was a widow at 13 and when [my husband] left me, he left me with a one-year-old baby. It was very hard. Very difficult for me left behind with a baby and still a baby myself.'
I feel sorry for him because he did not enjoy his life,' she says. 'He married young and finished in a war that ended his life. When I see his son, I sometimes cry. I was smuggled to London by Arab people,' she explains. 'They said: "you are working with us and we will take you to London". They brought me and then they left me here. It was so hard, very difficult,' she says frankly. 'I was thinking how to bring him to live with me [in London] but I can't bring him now because he's in his 20s. I tried last year and they said no.'
Global problem: India is the country with the highest number of child brides, this little girl among them
Still just 16-years-old, the former child bride was now an asylum seeker, initially placed with a foster family because of her youth but swiftly moved to a tiny flat of her own. She went back to school and learned English and now helps to run a charity called Girls Not Brides which aims to help former child brides from Ethiopia. Her son, now 25, lives in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, and grew up with his grandparents, only seeing his mother during her occasional visits home.
'It was so hard, very difficult,' she says frankly. 'I was thinking how to bring him to live with me [in London] but I can't bring him now because he's in his 20s. I tried last year and they said no. I told him: "Never ever think to marry young! I wanted him to get educated so I said to him: "look at me, I am your mother, look at everything that messed up my life!" He is a carpenter,' she adds. 'I am very proud of him now! I would say to girls, don't marry. Enjoy your childhood and go to school - learn. For me, I feel my childhood was robbed. I missed my education - I ended up empty - with nothing! I learned everything in London.'
And for the parents of those girls, her message is stronger still. 'Why do you damage his or her life? Send them to school to study. Do you know the problems that come with marrying off a child so young? They will miss their childhood.'
New life: Alemtsahye Gebrekidan was married off at the age of 10 but now lives in London
