UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center / Save the Children
UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center, in partnership with Save the Children, released in London this week Toward an End to Child Marriage—a study that spotlights insights from 21 countries regarding how to prevent child marriage, which affects an estimated 12 million girls each year
This practitioner-focused study is the first comprehensive review of child marriage interventions that focuses on development and humanitarian contexts. Researchers examined data from more than 375 reports and interviewed key practitioners globally.
Despite recent declines in the prevalence of child marriage globally, an estimated 12 million girls are still married each year.
Additionally, here has been growing concern around reports of increasing child marriage rates among those affected by conflict or natural disaster where underlying drivers such as gender inequality, social norms, and lack of opportunities for girls are exacerbated, and new drivers related to protection concerns and extreme poverty arise.
Consequently, girls who are married young experience a violation of their human rights and suffer negative impacts on their education, economic prospects, social lives, mental and physical health, and the health and nutrition of their children.
Effective interventions are urgently needed to address this critical issue. The purpose of the following study is to gather findings from efforts to prevent and respond to child marriage in both development and humanitarian contexts and determine what Save the Children and other organizations can do to improve their response to this critical issue.
Among the recommendations:
- Place youth voices at the center of all advocacy efforts.
- Prioritize research in four especially urgent regions and contexts: urban settings, Southeast Asia, and Latin America—in particular, gang violence in Central America.
- Assess pre-existing and crisis-specific drivers of child marriage in humanitarian contexts, including parents’ decision-making processes, and effective interventions.
“Child marriage has a devastating effect on the physical and mental health of girls and limits their lifelong opportunities,” says Julie Freccero, director of the Health and Human Rights Program and co-author of the study (with Human Rights Center Researcher Audrey Whiting). “We know that child marriage can increase when people are displaced by conflict and natural disaster, but we have very little evidence of what works to mitigate this. Interventions, and rigorous evaluations of those interventions, are urgently needed.”
Save the Children commissioned the study from UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center in order to inform the NGO’s work to end child marriage.
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Download the study: Toward an End to Child Marriage
