Harmful cultural practices, such as child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM), are discriminatory practices committed regularly over such long periods of time that communities and societies begin to consider them acceptable.
Around the world, hundreds of millions of girls and boys have experienced some form of violence, exploitation or harmful practice, although girls are at much greater risk. Child marriage and FGM span continents and cultures, yet, in every society in which they are practiced, they reflect values that hold girls in low esteem.
Some 650 million girls and women around the world today have been married as children, and over 200 million have undergone FGM.