"Though forced marriage has been denounced as a form of slavery by the United Nations, and though virtually all countries have established legal minimum ages for marriage, local customs continue in defiance of the law. In the village of Bembe, in the West African nation of Benin, women and children gather before their chief. 'Few of the girls in the village will reach 18 before they're married,' says Hector Gnonlonfin, founder of Tomorrow Children, a shelter for exploited children. 'We found a ten-year-old schoolgirl here who already had a husband.'"
—From "Inhuman Profit," September 2003, National Geographic magazine
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