“My name is Thea and I’m 12 years old. In about one month I will get married!”

So begins Norway’s most popular blog, Thea’s Wedding Blog.

Thea, who says One Direction is her favourite band and horse riding is her favourite hobby, uses the blog to discuss her upcoming nuptials with Geir – her 37-year-old fiancé.

“I do not know if I like this wedding stuff myself. Seems sort of like everything will be so different after I get married,” she writes.

Thea and her fiance, Geir. Photo: Thea’s Wedding Blog

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Thea tells readers about her unhappiness with having to move out of the family home, not attending high school, and fear of sex.

Unsurprisingly, many people contacted police in a desperate bid to put a stop to the wedding.

Luckily, Thea is not a real girl, and Thea’s Wedding Blog is in fact a marketing exercise by charity Plan Norway designed to raise awareness about an important human rights issue: child marriage.

While Thea may be a work of fiction, Plan estimates there are nearly 39,000 underage girls like her around the world who are forced into marriage every day.

Child marriage an “issue” in Australia

Plan Australia spokesperson Adam Cathro says that child marriage happens in both developed and developing countries, with several hundred cases confirmed in Australia.

“There’s no doubt it’s an issue in Australia,” Mr Cathro says.

“We do know from anecdotal reports from organisations that work in both NSW and around Melbourne that we’ve seen around 250 cases of child marriage in Australia.”

“No matter where you live, whether that’s a country where it’s reasonably common like Bangladesh, or whether that’s Australia or Norway, it’s driven by an undervaluing of girls; people who regard their girl children as their property,” he says.

Plan Norway’s campaign comes in the lead-up to the United Nation’s International Day of the Girl Child on October 11, which aims to empower adolescent girls though education. October 11 also happens to be Thea’s wedding date.

In Australia it is illegal to coerce a child (under the age of 16) into marriage, but Mr Cathro says many girls are not in the position to tell anyone about their forced marriage.

“No one turns up and says ‘guess what? I’ve just married a 12 year old child’, and the girls are also in no position to tell anyone about it either,” he says.

Thea trying on wedding dresses. Photo: Thea’s Wedding Blog

Girls who are forced into marriage, particularly in the developed world, usually drop out of education and then struggle later to get a job and earn a living, Mr Cathro says.

Child marriage is ingrained in many cultures, but Mr Cathro says Plan International is working hard to eradicate it by educating families, particularly in developing countries.

“We’re trying to change the way people think; we’re trying to change traditions, and that does take a lot of time and a lot of work,” he says.

“A lot of the countries where we work, where it’s particularly prevalent, we focus on education and explaining to people why it’s not a great idea to marry-off their children.”

“You need to make resources available, you need to make education available to people because when you can, they see an alternative.”