Sweden is the best country in the world to be a girl, according to an index of 144 countries by Save the Children, the international advocacy group.
Ireland ranked 29, 14 places behind the UK. Finland, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium completed the top five. The US, the world's biggest economy, came in at 32nd, below Kazakhstan and Algeria while Niger finished bottom.
The index ranks countries based on child marriage, schooling, teen pregnancy, maternal deaths and number of female politicians in national parliament.
Save the Children's head of inclusive development, Lisa Wise, one of the report's authors, said that the low ranking of the US was surprising. "It's one of those cases where it should be performing better." For Wise, it highlighted that the issue of gender equality isn't unique to developing countries. "Girls in relation to boys are denied their opportunities in high-income countries too."
The Every Last Girl report, published to mark International Day of the Girl, found that one girl under 15 is married every seven seconds and that girls as young as 10 are married off – often to much older men – in countries including Afghanistan, Yemen, India and Somalia.
Early marriage not only deprives girls of education and opportunities but increases the risk of death or childbirth injuries if they have babies before their bodies are ready.
"Child marriage starts a cycle of disadvantage that denies girls the most basic rights to learn, develop and be children," said Save the Children International ceo Helle Thorning-Schmidt.
“Girls who marry too early often can’t attend school, and are more likely to face domestic violence, abuse and rape. They fall pregnant and are exposed to STIs including HIV.”
Researchers say conflict, poverty and humanitarian crises are major factors that leave girls exposed to underage marriage.
The shutting down of schools in the wake of the Ebola outbreak led to an estimated 14,000 teen pregnancies in Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak, Save the Children said.
The global charity gave the example of Sahar, who did not want to give her real name, a 14-year-old Syrian refugee in Lebanon. Married to a 20-year-old man, aged just 13, Sahar is now two months pregnant.
“The wedding day, I was imagining it would be a great day but it wasn’t. It was all misery. It was full of sadness,” Save the Children quoted Sahar as saying.
“I feel really blessed that I am having a baby. But I am a child raising a child.”
The UN's children's agency Unicef estimates the number of women married in childhood will grow from 700 million today to about 950 million by 2030. – (Guardian Service; Reuters/Thomson Reuters Foundation)