Humanitarian settings (broadly defined) increase girls’ vulnerability to child marriage while at the same time disrupting existing and planned long-term efforts to combat the practice. Very little is documented about existing programs in these settings, so alongside my colleagues at UNICEF Innocenti with the support of UNFPA and UNICEF regional offices, we spoke with more than 60 practitioners and policymakers across five countries about what is there, what works, and what is needed to improve outcomes for girls in acute crises and protracted refugee settings. The report is titled “Delivering interventions to address child marriage in humanitarian settings in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.” Centering girls and their communities is crucial in designing programmes that acknowledge and address the life-saving nature of child marriage prevention and response in humanitarian settings, as is better monitoring and evaluation, accountability for outcomes, and efforts to mitigate the normative and operational barriers that arise in these settings in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. These data were collected in five countries in the spring of 2024, but we believe they have wide applicability across the region and over time, even as many political, legal, and other changes have occurred since and situations continue to evolve for those displaced and affected by humanitarian crises.
This work happened thanks to the efforts of so many people. Zara Ali is the heart and soul of it, directing the work through each step with keen academic rigor and a practical eye for the issues. Ramya Subrahmanian, Manahil Siddiqi, Hawraa Ismael, Maher Resk, Lubna Khalil, Layal Kouzi, Sharif Alkibsi were excellent co-authors and interviewers. We’re grateful for the collaboration of all those at UNICEF MENARO and UNFPA ASRO including Ismahan Ferhat, Dr. Shadia Elshiwy, Javier Aguilar, Evita Mouawad Jourdi, Stephanie Shanler, Indrani Sarkar and all of the interviewees, country office staff, and those who engaged with the work along the way. Thank you to all!
Please reach out if these issues are of interest to you. We are finalizing a sister study in Africa and thinking about next steps as well to ensure these learnings are taken forward.
Tag: child marriage
India-bound!
It’s (almost) official! I think I actually have a ticket and am leaving for India and the Philippines for the rest of the summer on Friday. I’ll post updates here as the mood strikes me, but feel free to follow @ekfletch and @EPoDHarvard on twitter for more frequent (and perhaps less related) content (pictures of all the momos I’m going to eat? Anyone?).
For now, I’ll leave you with the World Bank’s new project to determine the economic cost of child marriage, a well-funded, but really huge undertaking:
What is the economic cost of child marriage? We don’t really know. Studies – including those by the World Bank – suggest a range of negative impacts of child marriage on human development outcomes. For example, Bank staff have estimated that in sub-Saharan Africa child marriage may account in some countries for up to one-fifth of drop-outs among girls at the secondary level, and each additional year of delay in the age of (child) marriage could potentially increase the likelihood of literacy and secondary school completion by several percentage points for the affected girls. Another study published a few years ago in the Journal of Political Economy suggests similar impacts in the case of Bangladesh.
ERIN K. FLETCHER 