every year, 12 million girls are married before they reach the age of 18 a practice the un has said will take 300 years to eradicate. now, three of the world s most high profile humanitarians have vowed to tackle the issue together. but is this an impossible task? i have come to join michelle obama, amal clooney and melinda french gates on their first field visit together to malawi, a country where 42% of girls marry under the age of 18, to ask them how bad the issue is and if it can be turned around in a generation. michelle obama, thank you so much for speaking to us at bbc 100 women. thank you for being here, it s my pleasure. we re here to talk about the work you are doing to end child marriage along with amal clooney and melinda french gates. why is that an issue that is important to you personally? 0h.i have said this time and time again. i see myself in the girls that we are fighting for. you know, i see my daughters in those girls. if we just.put ourselves in those
ourselves in those girls shoes and think of, how would we feel if it were us or our daughters that were married off at the age of 12 or ten or however old, and their dreams, their opportunities and aspirations were cut off completely, married to an older man, first forced to start having children way before bedtime, any of us would be outraged at the thought, and if it were our children or grandchildren we would move heaven and earth to make sure that that didn t happen, we would make sure we were protect our daughters and our granddaughters. and i can t. not feel that our granddaughters. and i can t. .. not feel that for every girl around the world. i rememberl every girl around the world. i remember i met some young girls in ethiopia remember i met some young girls in ethiopia a number of years ago in ethiopia a number of years ago and in ethiopia a number of years ago and they were between ages nine and ago and they were between ages nine and 11. i mean, you lo
are searching for four teenagers who have gone missing. jevon hirst, harvey owen, wilf henderson and hugo morris are believed to be from shrewsbury and are thought to have been travelling in the harlech and porthmadog areas of gwynedd after camping in the area. harvey s mother crystal owen has told the bbc she is frantically worried. the police have appealed to the public to report any sightings of the group. our correspondent phil mackie joins us now from porthmadog. phil, what s the latest? i have just been through where the road is closed, the police cordoned some way up there. i walked for about a mile and couldn t see anything but we know in the past our north wales police have said they have recovered to the silver ford fiesta they were looking for, in which we know the four boys were travelling to north wales and had apparently come on a camping trip over the weekend. i can tell you that it s a particularly windy, narrow, steep road and these are people who had only re
Winds. In between, some pretty decent weather across the eastern borders of scotland, coming down to the eastern side of england. Too far towards the west, you start to run into showers, pretty heavy across wales and the south west, urged along by a noticeable breeze, and it is cold and miserable underneath that band of Rain And Snow and strong winds and that eases further north, followed by showers, turning wintry across higher ground, and then a new set of Weather Fronts across the South West Quarter. This is the feature that evens out the weekend because having had the bulk of the sunshine through saturday, england and wales are not doing quite so well. It does bug up along the south coast. Further north, scotland, after a disappointing saturday, gets better sunday, for the most part, save for the far north east. See you later. Hello. This is bbc news with maxine mawhinney. The headlines. Sinn fein make big gains in Northern Irelands Assembly elections. The dup is still the Biggest
Breaking The Wall Of Silence the wives separated from their husbands, shunned by their communities and treated as tainted goods. The moment their daughter has been left by her husband, her status becomes zero, nil the impact for women who are left, who have been abandoned, is quite devastating. Its leaving them almost in chains within their society. With thousands of brides branded as outcasts, we reveal the injustices and indignities many of them encounter. They marry us, they bring us over, then they treat us like a dirty rag. Ritu has just arrived from india. Shes embarking on an extraordinary personal mission to find her estranged husband. I am feeling a bit nervous as well as emotional, as i have not seen this man since one and a half years. I dont know how he will react when he sees me. Shes used up all her savings and put her Teaching Career on hold to come to london and get out of a marriage in which she feels abandoned. I felt betrayed. I felt that my whole world has been dist