Our World in English: Fighting child marriage through football

Our World in English: Fighting child marriage through football

From Learning English from the News by BBC Radio

March 27, 2026 · 14 min

About this episode

This episode explores how a girl named Munna resists child marriage by playing football in India.

Though illegal, child marriage is widely practiced in India. UNICEF’s latest estimate is that 216 million girls and women in India today have been married before they turned 18. But some girls and young women are trying to resist the practice. In this short documentary, we meet Munna, who found an unusual way out of becoming a child bride - through playing football. This episode of is based on the documentary India's sportswomen playing to be seen from Assignment on the BBC World Service. The original programme was reported by Divya Arya and produced by John Murphy. Find the original programme here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct6rcv Get our latest programmes. Subscribe to our free email newsletter: https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/newsletters

People in this episode

Guest: Munna

Topics covered

  • child marriage
  • football
  • women's rights
  • India
  • UNICEF
  • sports

Keywords

  • child marriage
  • football
  • UNICEF
  • India
  • women's empowerment
  • sportswomen

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: UNICEF

Places: India

More episodes of Learning English from the News

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Learning English from the News podcast page.