"MOTHER, I CANNOT MARRY THIS MAN. I AM TOO YOUNG. I WANT TO CONTINUE STUDIES"

Marta was 13 years old when her mother told her she would have to marry a 73-year-old man. No longer able to afford schooling her, her mother saw marriage as the only solution. When Marta refused, she was asked to leave home. "She (my mother) went inside, took my clothes and kicked me out of the house," said Marta. Her story is one too many in a country with one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world. Nearly one in two girls in Mozambique marry before the age of 18.