"If current child marriage rates continue, more than 140 million girls will become child brides between 2011 and 2020, the United Nations said [Thursday], warning that little progress has been made towards ending this harmful practice," the U.N. News Centre reports. "Of these 140 million girls, 50 million will be under the age of 15, according to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), which added that young girls who marry before the age of 18 have a greater risk of becoming victims of intimate partner violence than those who marry later," the news service writes, noting, "Child marriage is increasingly recognized as a violation of the rights of girls as it interferes with their education, blocks their opportunity to gain vocational and life skills, and increases their risk to sexual violence as well as their chances to contract HIV" (3/7).