10 OCT 2014
Thousands of people across the world are speaking out against child marriage following the success of a fictional blog by a 12 year old girl announcing her wedding in Norway this Saturday, on International Day of the Girl.
View Plan International Norway’s video about 12 year old Thea’s marriage to 37 year old Geir which has been viewed over 5.5 million times:
Plan Norway posted the fictional blog from 12 year old Thea, who revealed through a series of posts that she is marrying a 37 year old man named Geir.
With the help of Plan celebrity ambassadors, who tweeted about the blog, the story soon went viral and had more than 130,000 readers in its first day. Several hundred readers added comments, saying they were horrified, advising that a marriage like this is illegal according to Norwegian laws, some even contacted the police.
14 million child brides
The media picked up the story and the same day Plan Norway admitted that the blog was part of the campaign to raise awareness of child marriage.
14 million girls across the world become child brides each year. All too often they are pulled out of school, denied their right to an education and have babies before their bodies are ready.
Global reach
Plan Norway has reached more than 10 million people with campaign messages, while the blog has had over 1 million unique views in Norway alone.
The campaign has now spread across the globe. Recently actor Ashton Kutcher shared the message with his 18.5 million Facebook followers, while the story has been covered by news sites including; The Huffington Post, CNN, BBC, BuzzFeed, Independent, RTL, La Republica and Scandinavian newspapers, radio and television.
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