COERCING girls under the age of 18 into marriage is as repugnant as apartheid and should be battled in the same way, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and anti-apartheid icon Archbishop Desmond Tutu said.

"This is an issue I liken to apartheid ... that I would want to bring to it the same passion, the same commitment I had in our struggle against apartheid," he said.

"Apartheid sought to quite deliberately hamstring a whole community, and this practice does the same. It is hamstringing whole communities, preventing them from developing as they could have if girl children were given the opportunity of staying longer in school."

An estimated 10million children are married off worldwide each year, according to statistics supplied by global health agencies.

"I look at my grandchildren and I say, had they been born elsewhere, these children would have been brides, and that really shook me," Tutu earlier told a meeting of activists battling child marriage.

Tutu said if the practice was not brought to an end soon the world could forget about achieving the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aimed at slashing poverty and hunger, and boosting access to healthcare and education for all by 2015.

The rate at which children are given away to marriage has risen, and conflicts and droughts on the continent have worsened the situation.

Human rights campaigner Graça Michel, Nelson Mandela's wife, said: "No one has the right to determine what is the life of another human being - even when you are a parent ."