Bethlehem Tsegey, 14, smiles brightly as she describes her relief to be back at school. Since Beati Akor Primary School reopened in the Eastern Zone of the North Ethiopian region of Tigray, not all the girls have returned. Two years of war and the region’s worst drought for 40 years killed around 600,000 people and plunged the rest into hunger and poverty. ‘A lot of 16-year-olds are engaged to be married nowadays,’ she says. ‘Some of them were students here at this school.’
In parts of Ethiopia worst hit by drought and food shortages, rates of child marriage rose by 119 per cent from 2021 to 2022, reversing decades of progress, according to the Children’s Environmental Rights Initiative coalition.
