Begum, a Rohingya refugee, is relieved she married off one of her seven daughters before funding cuts closed her school and thousands of others in Bangladesh’s cramped refugee camps, affecting nearly half a million children.
The daughter, Begum's second child, was 16.
"Without school, girls sit idle. People start talking,” said Begum, 35, as her youngest, a toddler, tugged at her headscarf and four other daughters huddled nearby in their bamboo shelter in one of the camps in Cox's Bazar. "I was afraid. Marriage was the only option. I just pray her husband lets her study.”
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