Accelerating The Movement to End Child Marriage

This project aims to reduce child early and forced marriage by galvanizing stronger political support greater resources better programming and improved tracking of progress to end child early and forced marriage. The project works in countries that have a strong history of commitment and action to delay marriage and are poised for scale up and in countries at earlier stages that present increasing promise for action. Some project activities include: (1)supporting national actors to develop or enhance resourced national plans to end child marriage; (2) supporting lawmakers to develop legislation on child early and forced marriage that is grounded in human rights; (3) engaging key stakeholders including religious leaders teachers health practitioners child protection practitioners military and police officials to advocate for the end of child early and forced marriage in their communities;(4) developing better measures to gauge the rate of child marriage within countries; and (5) convening South-South exchanges to refine the overall approach to end child early and forced marriage across all countries. Child early and forced marriage threatens the lives and futures of young girls in many countries globally. Canada is committed to intensifying international efforts to end child early and forced marriage in every corner of the world.

The expected intermediate outcomes for this project include:(1) increased political engagement and appropriate resources committed by governments in Bangladesh Burkina Faso Ethiopia Ghana Yemen and Zambia to address reducing child early and forced marriage (CEFM) in their respective countries; (2) improved coordinated and multi-sectoral programming to address CEFM by governments and civil society actors at national and community levels; and (3) Strengthened use of programmatic evidence base and south-south cooperation on effective approaches for ending CEFM by governments and civil society actors at national regional/ continental and global levels.