Ashley Judd vows to combat 15M forced child marriages every year

Actress Ashley Judd is vowing to lead a campaign to put an end to 15 million forced marriages of children as young as 9 each year, calling the global problem a "violation of every human right."

"It is unacceptable. Child marriage in a gruesome way amplifies global gender inequalities," Judd told USA TODAY in a phone interview Tuesday, after she was named  the United Nations goodwill ambassador on child marriage. "Child brides are voiceless. I am giving voice to these girls," said Judd, the star of the 2014 film Divergent.

Judd, 47, who has been a global advocate for women's rights and AIDS, said she hopes to work with the U.N. long enough to visit each program that exists in 150 countries to address the problem at least twice.

There are currently more than 70 million girls around the world who are forced into marriages, often arranged by fathers, and expected to bear children soon after. Laws outlawing the practice exist in many countries but often are not enforced.

"She does not have a choice about when and how to have sex. She does not have a choice about when or how to get pregnant. She is taken out of school and therefore has no access to a primary or secondary education," Judd said.

"It's a pretty bleak picture, unfortunately," said Lyric Thompson,  senior policy manager at the International Center for Research on Women.  "It just wasn't talked about for decades."

Thompson said the center focuses on ways to delay these marriages, such as keeping girls in schools longer or allowing them to provide income for their households.

Countries with the highest rates of child marriage are Niger, Central African Republic, Chad, Bangladesh and Mali, according to Girls Not Brides, a partnership of 500 organizations committed to ending the practice.

"This is occurring everywhere. It is not about geography, it is all over," said  U.N. Undersecretary-General Babatunde Osotimehin, who is also executive director of the U.N. Population Fund, which focuses on reproductive health.

"It isn’t just about the marriage alone, which is despicable. They also expect them to bear children. They are totally not ready. … They face the dangers of actually dying from the pregnancy or giving birth," Osotimehin said.