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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of As Equals, CNN’s ongoing series on gender inequality. For information about how the series is funded and more, check out our FAQs.

Since 17-year-old Rehana was a child, she dreamt of supporting her family. An only child to parents struggling to make ends meet in Bangladesh, she says, “I always thought, I have no brother, who will look after my parents?” She had wanted to take on that responsibility herself, but at 14, her ambitions were put on hold when a powerful family in the community proposed marriage.

“I didn’t understand how to get married…I liked to study. I studied all the time,” she tells CNN.

Rehana, whose name has been changed, instead became one of an estimated 38 million girls in the country – and 650 million girls worldwide – who were married or in a union before they turned 18. Scroll down to read her full story below.

Rehana’s experience is one of more than 250 recorded as part of a new report publishing this week, shared exclusively with CNN, providing a window into the everyday lives of girls worldwide who married or entered unions as children – some as young as 12 years old. The unions concerned are informal marriages or cohabitations, unrecognized by law but regarded as official by communities.

The 2025 State of the World’s Girls report by global NGO Plan International reveals how these relationships leave girls vulnerable for the rest of their lives. It looked at 15 countries with high child marriage rates across Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and found that in all, advocates believe such marriages and unions are going largely unchecked by authorities, despite there often being laws in place, while the needs of young brides are going unheard.

The researchers interviewed more than 250 girls who had married or entered a union before the age of 18 – now aged between 15 and 24 – as well as more than 240 child marriage activists. They found that a significant number are under the control of older spouses, face intimate partner violence and are not in education or employed. Many became mothers at a young age and have minimal agency in their lives, including in their sexual and reproductive choices.

The accounts also shed light on the varied drivers of child marriage, which may not always be forced by parents or communities but instead by social and economic circumstances or lack of alternative options. And among those surveyed, more than one in four girls had sought a divorce, left their marriage or had their marriages end – but later found themselves unprepared for this new and uncertain future.

“Girls are entering child marriage for many different reasons, and then they are choosing where possible to leave it.