This is an IHeart podcast.

I'm Maeve Higgins and this is Solvable, interviews with the world's most innovative thinkers

who are working to solve the world's biggest problems.

My solvable is to end child marriage globally by the year 2030.

That's Mabel Van Oranier and she is trying to solve a problem which is bigger than you might think. Child marriage is a worldwide problem.

Globally, one in five girls are thought to be married as children.

That means that about 12 million children are getting married every year.

Child marriage happens everywhere, including right here in America.

It was only last year that Delaware and New Jersey became the first states to outlaw marriage for anyone under the age of 18.

The state of Missouri has the most lenient law in the nation that allows 15-year-olds to wed, with only one parent's signature required.

But child marriage happens most often in developing countries.

The problem cuts across ethnic, cultural and religious lines, and can be found everywhere,

from Africa to the Middle East, Asia to Europe, and like I mentioned here in America.

UNICEF says that marriage before the age of 18

often amounts to a fundamental violation of human rights.

There are many things that increase the risk that a child will get married,

including poverty, the idea that marriage will provide protection, social norms and ideas about

family honour, or even just customary or religious laws that condone child marriage.

Countries like Niger and the Central African Republic and Bangladesh, they have among the highest

rates of child marriage in the world,

and they're all struggling with a multitude of other issues too.

In today's episode, you'll hear Mabel talking mainly about girls.

...