Fifty million child marriages could be prevented by 2030 if all girls around the world finished secondary school, new analysis by Save the Children reveals.[i] With girls more than 2.5 times more likely to be out of school than boys in humanitarian and displacement settings, the agency highlighted the importance of addressing child marriage as a key barrier to girls’ education in conflict and crisis.
The critical role that education plays, and will continue to play, in reducing child marriage rates has been outlined in a new briefing, Working Together to End Child Marriage.
With many girls living in insecure environments including during conflict and other crises, parents often feel that marrying their daughters will protect them from harm in otherwise dangerous living conditions. This often then leads to girls missing out on education: child marriage is one of the leading reasons for school drop-out in low-income countries. At the same time, girls who are out-of-school are exposed to increased risk factors for child marriage, particularly where social norms place higher value on marriage as a life option for girls than education.
The briefing highlights the impact that universal education could have, as well as the huge amount of progress still needed to end child marriage and ensure all girls are able to complete secondary education. In addition, it calls on world leaders to prioritise girls’ access to health and protection programs to help end child marriage.
Bill Chambers, President and CEO of Save the Children, said that while education alone won’t end child marriage, it is a critical piece of the puzzle in ending the abusive practice.
“A toxic combination of conflict and crisis, combined with poverty and gender discrimination means many families come to the conclusion their daughters are better off becoming wives and mothers than with getting an education,” Chambers said.
“When a girl gets married it doesn’t just violate her rights once—the consequences last a lifetime. She is more likely to suffer abuse, more likely to become a mother before she is emotionally or physically ready, and her children are more likely to die before their fifth birthday.
“We’ve seen that a combination of education and girls’ empowerment programs have been the most successful way to bring down child marriage rates, while cash payments give parents the opportunity to keep their daughters in education and enrol them in school, instead of having them working in the fields to add to the family income” added Chambers.
Save the Children welcomed Canada’s leadership in girls’ education through a historic investment and policy commitment at the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Charlevoix earlier this year, and highlighted the importance of tackling child marriage as a key barrier to girls’ education.
The new briefing also reveals that:
- While an estimated 25 million child marriages have been prevented over the past decade, no developing country[ii] is currently on track to meet the UN goal of wiping out the practice by 2030[iii];
- Meanwhile, based on current trends:
- universal upper secondary school completion will not be achieved before 2084 – more than 50 years off target;
- according to the current trend, 134 million girls will marry between 2018 and 2030. Almost 10 million girls will marry in 2030 alone, and more than two million of those marriages will involve girls under 15 years of age;[iv]
- Last year, 21% of women between 20 and 24 years globally were married or in a union before the age of 18.[v]
- A recent Save the Children study in Niger – which has the highest rates of child marriage in the world – also found that girls who do not attend school are more at risk of child marriage, early pregnancy, and being malnourished.
Previous research by Save the Children and the World Bank has shown that while legal and policy reform is also important in ending child marriage and keeping girls in school, so is enforcing these laws and changing attitudes at the community level.
In Nepal – home to one of Asia’s highest rates of child marriage despite being illegal since 1963 – Save the Children has been advocating and working closely with local governments, law enforcement agencies, religious leaders, communities, and girls, to raise awareness of the dangers of child marriage.
Through activities like street dramas written and performed by children, to working with religious leaders who now refuse to marry anyone under the legal age of 20, child marriage rates dropped by 11% between 2015-2017 in areas where Save the Children operates.
“This is a testament that shifting social attitudes is important, which is why we’ve made such a huge effort to work with traditional religious leaders – making them partners, rather than barriers, to change – with incredible results,” said Ned Onley, Save the Children’s Country Director in Nepal. “Two of the religious leaders we work with now make parents submit birth certificates to prove that both the bride and groom are of legal age before they will even consider marrying them.
“Progress is being made but not fast enough. On International Day of the Girl we urge governments to prioritise tackling child marriage, one of the major barriers to the empowerment and education of so many girls.”
Save the Children is calling on governments to step up their efforts to develop and implement action plans that include full access to health, and protection for girls. These plans must be fairly financed and must incorporate a strong focus on education.
ENDS
For interviews contact Jessica Bryant on 1-647-973-1185 or jbryant@savethechildren.ca
On the methodology:
[i] We analysed data from Demographic Health Surveys (DHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster
Surveys (MICS) for 67 countries to determine the likelihood of a girl being married and in school at the same time. This analysis is illustrative and embodies a number of assumptions and limitations. For example, the calculation is based on the impact of education on child marriage and does not the impact of child marriage on education. For further discussion, see accompanying technical note.
[iii] This would include all segments of society for which trend data is available. Analysis is based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Leave no one Behind pledge to meet the target for all groups, which in this analysis includes the poorest 20%, and girls in rural areas. Calculations are based on available data from a subset of 68 low- and middle-income countries that have disaggregated data on child marriage.
[iv] Save the Children calculation, see technical note.
[v] UNICEF (2018) Child Marriage: Latest trends and future prospects, https://data.unicef.org/resources/child-marriage-latest-trends-and-future-prospects/
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