#stephanie sinclair

Teresa Jeffs, 16, daughter of jailed leader Warren S. Jeffs, plays on the family trampoline. She was reportedly “sealed ” or married in a religious ceremony to a 38-year-old man, who was later sentenced to ten years in prison for sexual assault. Texas state law holds that unmarried girls under age 17 cannot give consent.

15-year-old Radha on her wedding day in Rajasthan, India

Destaye, 11, and Addisu, 23, Ethiopia. Addisu and his new bride Destaye are married in a traditional Ethiopian Orthodox wedding in the rural areas outside the city of Gondar, Ethiopia. Community members said that because of his standing as a priest, Addisu’s bride had to be a virgin. This was the reason Destaye was given to him at such a young age.

NIGERIA: Portrait of sisters Yagana, 21, Yakaka 19, and Falimata, 14, in Maiduguri, Nigeria, in 2016. The girls were abducted and held captive for years by Boko Haram militants until each found moments to escape. - photo © by Stephanie Sinclair

“The terrorist group, Boko Haram, drew global outrage after abducting more than 270 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok, forcing many into marriage and motherhood. In armed conflicts, child marriage is increasingly used as a weapon of war, forcing girls to give birth give birth to the next germination of fighters. Thousands of girls remain missing in Nigeria with little help of rescue. Those who manage to escape struggle with little support to rebuild their lives.” (Source)

Stephanie Sinclair is the winner of the 2017 Anja Niedringhaus Courage In Photojournalism Award [presented by the International Women's Media Foundation's (IWMF)].

Documenting the Girls ‘Too Young to Wed’ with Stephanie Sinclair

To see more of Stephanie’s work, follow @stephsinclairpix on Instagram.

“Child marriage is a root cause for a lot of the issues that girls face,” says photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair (@stephsinclairpix). Her ongoing 15-year series “Too Young to Wed” (@tooyoungtowed) sheds light on the challenges girls face — cyclical poverty, curtailed education, psychological trauma, sexual violence and, at times, the transmission of HIV — when forced to marry at a young age. The work has taken her to numerous countries where the practice is common, including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Yemen. “While it has similarities in certain parts of the world, it has differences,” Stephanie says. “There’s different cultural nuances in each place.”