Priest Nigatu Alebachew dances with guests after peforming the marriage of Tsegaya Mekonen, 13, and Talema Meseret, 23, in Yeganda Village, Amhara Region, Ethiopia on May 20, 2007. The practice of early marriage remains widespread in Ethiopia, especially in the northern Amhara and Tigray regions, where parents consent to their daughters? consummated marriages when they are still as young as 10 or 12. In Amhara, 50 percent of girls are married by the age of 15, despite the enactment in 2000 of the revised Family Law, which sets the legal age for marriage at 18.
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