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Millions of girls around the world, some as young as 5 years old, find their fates sealed by early marriages.

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We travel to Ethiopia, the country with the highest rate of child marriage anywhere in the world, to live life with a child bride.

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Sariye Todes always thought she'd be going to school at this age, always thought that she would have years before she had to take care of and be intimate with a man.

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But her school days are over. At 12 years old, she has already been a wife for four months.

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On the day her childhood ended, her mother lied to her. She told her she was preparing for an Easter celebration. That's not what it was.

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I believed her, but then I asked her again and she revealed that I'm getting married the next day.

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Marriage was the last thing Sariye expected. She didn't know what it meant, but she was sure she didn't want it.

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All I said was, if you want to ruin my future. I didn't feel anything. I didn't laugh. I didn't cry.

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But her mother, convinced she couldn't provide for her after the death of Sariye's father years earlier, had arranged for her to marry.

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I never met my husband before I married him. I didn't even recognize him on our wedding day.

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He is unseemly good.

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Sariye is just one of the estimated 50 million child brides across the world.

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This is a story of what it's like to live a life you never asked for, to have your childhood stolen.

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Sariye's day begins at sunrise when she cleans the hut she shares with her husband.

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She doesn't go to school, but watches every day as her friends leave without her.

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I feel so angry when I see my friends going off to school. It hurts.

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Hurts as she realizes that every day that passes is one more day with no education.

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One more afternoon spent preparing food and cooking lunch.

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She and her husband sit down together in total silence.

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More than 30 minutes pass and not a word is spoken.

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Dusk falls and the wind picks up.

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Dinner comes and goes and again silence.

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In this, the Amhara region of Ethiopia, an estimated 1 in 5 girls marry before their 10th birthday.

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Nearly 40% are wed before the age of 15 and some are married as young as 5 years old.

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Catch girls young. Catch them young before they get too smart, before they start asking too many questions.

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That's the logic in the region, says Helen Mdem-Mikail of the United Nations Population Fund.

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It's a problem related to gender inequalities.

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She should not be highly educated as much as a boy and she should be subservient to a man.

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A man like Jebewa, Sariye's husband, a farmer and a man 10 years older than she.

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But Jebewa says it's not a marriage of romance for him either.

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I decided to marry her because there was no one to cook for me.

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To get someone to do that, I needed a wife.

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In return, he says he'll provide Sariye with security.

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Security perhaps, but there may be a price to pay.

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Sariye says what bothers her most of all is what happens at night.

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I cried the first day I had sex because I didn't know what it was supposed to be like.

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It's not good to get married so young because the girl is forced to have sex with her husband and she will be hurt.

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And if she gets pregnant, there may be devastating consequences as her body may be too small to safely give birth.

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In fact, pregnancy is the leading cause of death for girls between the ages of 15 to 19 in the developing world.

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Despite all of this, early marriage remains a tradition vehemently defended by many of Amhara's village elders.

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I believe in getting married young. That marriage should be arranged for children.

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It's ingrained in our society. The society believes in this.

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But long-standing tradition is no excuse for what's happening to the girls of Ethiopia,

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says the country's Minister of Health, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

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Because it has been there in our culture for long, it doesn't justify that it should be with us for the future.

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The government did pass a law in 1998 forbidding marriage before the age of 18.

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But the law is facing its own difficulties.

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I think having the law is one thing and enforcing it is also another thing.

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Governed by custom and culture, few local officials and community members actually enact and adhere to the national law.

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And so, for many girls, running away from their marriages is the only escape.

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Up to 20% of girls who migrate to urban areas do so to flee such a future.

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And that's what happened to 17-year-old Yeshi Mekri.

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My family wanted me to marry when I was 8 years old, so I escaped to the nearest city.

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Like so many other girls, she left a quiet rural village and found herself in a dangerous city with few options.

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She began working in someone's home, but that didn't last long.

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I began working as a maid, but a broker soon found me this job.

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A broker sold her to a brothel.

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She's now a prostitute working in a red-light district.

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She sleeps with up to 30 men a night and her income just $5 an evening.

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Next to her bed, Yeshi keeps posters.

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This one, she says, represents her childhood.

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This one, her present.

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There's no easy answer.

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If I knew I would work like this, I would have preferred to get married.

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That's something Sariye, trapped in her own marriage, may find hard to understand.

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When I was very young, I never wanted to get married.

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I wanted to have a full life.

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And while the life she has may be unlike the life she imagined,

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she still dreams of something different for her future children.

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And she's getting support from the most unlikely of places, her husband, Jebewa.

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If I have daughters, I want them all to go to school.

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I want them to have a different future than the one Sariye and I have.

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In an effort to protect child brides and sex workers against unwanted pregnancies

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and the spread of HIV-AIDS,

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the Ethiopian government and the United Nations Population Fund

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are making contraceptives and obstetric care available to girls across the country.