TBILISI, Georgia — “I want to have my own business and travel around the world.”

“I want to become a lawyer because I hate injustice.”

“I’ll have a family after I’m 24. Until then I have to study.”

Like children and young people all around the world, girls in Georgia have big dreams for their future — dreams that can be thwarted if they are forced to marry early. The existing data shows that up to 17 per cent of Georgian women were married before the age of 18. However, the true figure is unknown, as most child marriages are not registered.

Photographer Dina Oganova has been taking portraits of girls in Georgia and asking them about how they envision their future lives as a way to show why every girl should be given the opportunity to reach her full potential. Click through the slideshow below to see some of the images and words from Oganova’s documentary project, “Girls from the Future.” Her work is supported by UNFPA’s Georgia Country Office within the framework of the UN Joint Programme for Gender Equality, funded by the Government of Sweden.