Ending child marriage: five minutes with . . . Mabel van Oranje

“Until about a decade ago the problem of child marriage was really invisible, so that the 12 million girls who were being married every year globally were not being spoken about. There were fewer than 20 organisations working in this field, I suspect because this is a matter affecting adolescent girls and also because it’s a complex matter driven by poverty, tradition, sexuality, and inequality.

“Coming together with some of these groups eight years ago we realised the hypocrisy of the Millennium Development Goals, because how could the world have committed to put every girl …