#12-year-old girl in Kenya rescued after being married to 2 men within a month

A children’s rights campaigner and government officials in Kenya rescued a 12-year-old girl whose father had married her off to two men within a month.

The girl’s father in Narok County west of the capital Nairobi forced her to marry a 51-year-old man and then a 35-year-old man.

“The father gave her off to the elderly man to be married. She had no option than to get married to the younger man,” Joshua Kaputah from the Narok County Peace Association told the BBC.

Kaputah told the news outlet that the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic have increased cases of child marriages.

“Some families are hungry and the prospect of receiving two or three cows as dowry is quite tempting,” he said.

The pandemic is now spreading swiftly in parts of the African continent of 1.3 billion people as the world’s most poorly funded health systems begin to face what experts have warned all along: They would be rapidly overwhelmed.