As a key player in shaping global development priorities—priorities that include education, health care, food security, economic empowerment and ending violence against women and girls—the United States has an important role in ending early and forced marriage worldwide. We can’t achieve real, sustainable development without protecting and securing the right of all girls to decide if, when and whom they marry. The importance of ending child marriage has received an increasing amount of attention in recent years, and political will to address the issue is hopefully at a tipping point. Now is the time for the U.S. government to translate this rhetoric into more dollars invested strategically in policies and programs to prevent child marriage and support girls who are already married.

With the recent passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), Secretary of State John Kerry now has a legislative mandate to produce a multisectoral and multiyear strategy to end child marriage.

The multisectoral aspect of the legislative mandate is important because there is a diversity of root causes of child marriage, including gender inequality, poverty and religious and customary practices. Therefore, the solutions to end child marriage must be equally diverse and cover a range of sectors (such as health, education and economic empowerment) to provide a holistic and comprehensive response that addresses the full needs of married and unmarried girls.

Specifically, ending child marriage requires investing in policies and programs that:

• Are coordinated across relevant U.S. agencies and bureaus and focused on building girls’ health, social, and economic assets, and promoting gender-equitable and pro-girl social norms;
• Include partnership with other donors and national governments in specific sub-national districts;
• Increase work directly with married girls, or girls at-risk for early marriage as a core constituency, offering them information, skills, and support networks, including girl-only spaces;
• Integrate activities for preventing early marriage and supporting married adolescents into existing programs, including those focused on improving outcomes related to maternal health, HIV/AIDS, economic empowerment, food security, and education.
• Define and evaluate change at the level of the girl, as well as her family and community, over time;
• Educate and mobilize parents, religious and traditional leaders, and community members;
• Enhance the accessibility and quality of schooling for girls;
• Offer economic support and incentives for girls and their families; and
• Foster an enabling legal and policy framework.

As co-chair of Girls Not Brides USA, the International Women’s Health Coalition is working to ensure the U.S. government, working across relevant bureaus and agencies, develops and implements a comprehensive strategy to end child marriage. This includes appropriating the necessary funds to fully execute the strategy, as well as monitoring efforts and measuring progress toward meeting our goals.

An estimated 140 million girls will become child brides between 2011 and 2020. Failure to prioritize the development and implementation of comprehensive policies and programs for married and unmarried girls is ultimately a failure to help girls who need it most to live healthy, safe, educated and empowered lives.

You can help: join the 50 Days of Action for Women and Girls campaign by tweeting with the hashtags #usa4girls and #usa4women and calling upon the U.S. government to do its part to end this egregious violation of human rights.

Our future prospects as a global community depend on whether we choose to take decisive and strategic action now. Girls simply cannot and should not have to wait any longer.

Let’s give girls a choice, and a chance, for a real future.

Not only does VAWA protect women and girls in the United States from violence, but it also ensures that the U.S. is doing its part to protect girls from being forced into early marriages. Ending early and forced marriage is vital to the goal of ensuring that girls around the world are able to lead healthy, empowered, educated, and safe lives. As Senator Durbin, a champion on this issue, stated just after the vote, the bill’s “new mandate for a multisectoral strategy to end child marriage is an important step forward and now we must focus our efforts on ensuring it is developed without delay and its implementation is fully funded.”

The passage of this bill is a testament to how various communities that care about the health and safety of women and girls can come together to fight for what is necessary and what is right. It is also a testament to the hard work of steadfast leaders in the United States Congress on this issue, such as Senator Durbin (D-IL), Congresswoman McCollum (D-MN), Congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL), and former Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME). We congratulate them on this accomplishment and thank them for their service to women and girls around the world.

For more reactions from communities and Congress, please see:

• Reps. McCollum and Schock Applaud House Passage of Child Marriage Prevention Strategy in Violence Against Women Act
• Interagency Working Group – “Congress Passes Violence Against Women Act”

Young people all over the world face a range of unique challenges to exercising their rights.  Barriers to age-appropriate health services, meaningful education, and viable livelihoods opportunities are among the most pressing impediments to youth empowerment.

The International Women’s Health Coalition is centrally concerned with the sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people.  We believe that working with both young men and women is critical to ensuring that the rights of all young people, particularly girls, are universally protected and realized. The following contribution focuses specifically on the challenges facing girls, who continue to experience systematic social, economic and political marginalization in every part of the world.

Given the global persistence of gender inequality, many of the issues disproportionately affecting young people also tend to disproportionately affect girls. In 1997, UNAIDS reported that 60% of new HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa were among young people (aged 15-24), with a 2:1 ratio of infected girls to infected boys.  This ratio continues to grow increasingly lopsided, with girls representing 74% of new infections among young people in 2009.

Additionally, girls face extraordinarily high rates of violence.  The experience of violence, the perceived threat of violence, or the stigma associated with being a victim of violence hinder access to entitlements, opportunities for social participation, and employment.

In developing countries, 40% of girls have their first child before the age of twenty, many before the age of 18. Not only does this mean that more girls are dropping out of school, but girls are also more likely than adults to die, experience complications, or suffer chronic injuries related to childbirth. Because they have less access to contraceptives and are less sexually experienced, adolescents are more likely than adults to seek out unsafe (often late-term) abortions.  Each year, it is estimated that 2 million to 4.4 million adolescents in developing countries have abortions, 70,000 unsafe abortions are carried out, and 13% of all maternal deaths occur as a result of unsafe abortion.

Early pregnancy is often associated with child marriage, a practice which also puts girls at increased risk of HIV infection.  Female genital mutilation, infanticide, nutritional bias—these and other harmful traditional practices disproportionately affect girls, infringing on their fundamental rights and opportunities for development.

The short answer to why these inequalities exist is that girls, especially the most vulnerable girls, continue to remain invisible. Despite the aforementioned figures, policymakers have consistently masked the specific needs of girls within “male-focused and male-dominated community-based activities and generic ‘youth’ prevention initiatives, all of which widely miss the mark” (Bruce, Temin, & Hallman, 2012).  This generic youth programming disproportionately benefits boys over girls overall, but it also favors unmarried to married girls, well-connected to socially marginalized girls, urban to rural girls, girls belonging to an ethnic majority to migrant or indigenous girls, and so on.

Girls also remain invisible because of how we measure progress.  Primary education enrollment figures, for example, are based on one day of the school year; even if there were genuine parity on this particular day, these figures fail to account for the reality that girls often miss multiple days of school each week because their domestic and reproductive responsibilities take priority.  Moreover, data on young people is rarely disaggregated, resulting in measures of participation which fail to report gender, age, marital status, and other critical factors.

The disproportionate burden that girls share for maternal morbidity and mortality, the time burdens that girls shoulder, the staggering inequalities in girls’ educational outcomes—these are all reversible realities. To tackle these disparities, we need to begin by making girls visible.  We must call for the post-2015 agenda to pay particular attention to girls and the challenges that they face.  The risks facing girls are well documented and the next step is to match the research with the necessary resources.

We need to make girls visible.

Making girls visible begins with how we count them.  By properly counting girls and disaggregating data by age and gender, we can target youth programming at specific subsets of youth—like adolescent girls.  We can also measure whether programs are actually reaching the girls who are most at risk.

We need to invest in girls.

We must invest in programming aimed specifically at girls, with an emphasis on the most at-risk populations of girls—those who engage in transactional sex, those who are forced into early marriage, those who fluently speak their native language but cannot communicate in their national language, and so on.  These programs must include the following features.

• Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) must be thorough, scientifically sound, and culturally appropriate.  It should take place in a safe and healthy learning environment and it should explicitly address gender norms and gender equality.  When young people are educated about human rights, gender equality, and the role of power in relationships, they are not only equipped with the tools to negotiate their own health relationships, but they are also able to educate and influence power-brokers in their communities.
• Comprehensive services must be universally available and accessible.  This means, access to high quality sexual and reproductive health care, all forms of safe and effective contraception, safe abortion and post abortion care, maternity care, and prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections including HIV.
• Education is foundational to girls’ empowerment. We must ensure that all girls, no matter how poor, isolated or disadvantaged, are able to attend school regularly and without the interruption of early pregnancy, forced marriage, etc.  Education—for both girls and boys—must go beyond academics and equip young people with life skills so that they are prepared to think critically and challenge discriminatory and repressive policies and practices.
• Empowering spaces ensure girls have the opportunity to feel secure, be themselves, and plan for their safety and development.  Even if only for a few hours a week, accessing safe spaces allows girls to frame their own agendas, receive training on sexual and reproductive health and rights, and develop their social and economic capital. These participatory social spaces also foster opportunities for community-building and networking, mitigating the isolation that many girls experience.

We need to support young leaders.

We must continue to support both young women and young men to be advocates for change. Ensuring that reproductive rights are protected and promoted rests in the hands of young women and men, particularly young people throughout the global South.  Young people should be involved in all types of decision making on sexual and reproductive health and rights.  Seasoned advocates must be willing to pass the torch, share best practices, and work alongside—sometimes even be led by—a new generation of SRHR leaders.

As advocates, we can listen to one another and work in tandem to repeal legislation that legitimizes discrimination against girls and press for new protections that ensure equality of access to health services, jobs and earnings, education, property and all the rest.  Addressing the profoundly complex root causes of gender inequality (and accordingly the inequalities experienced by girls) is not a simple challenge.

As we begin to develop a tangible action plan for the post-2015 development framework, we must remain mindful that shifting the social and cultural norms that permit and promote discrimination against girls is not a simple box-ticking task. We cannot continue to view gender equality as a singular aim, but rather as both an explicit goal and an issue that needs to be mainstreamed throughout the post-2015 development agenda.

The last couple of days of the ICPD Global Youth Forum in Bali, Indonesia, have seen a flurry of around-the-clock activity by nearly 1,000 young people, adult allies, NGO representatives, academics, government officials, and other stakeholders from around the world. Their hard work is already paying off.

Yesterday, forum participants developed a number of “Staying Healthy” recommendations to ensure that governments prioritize programs that empower vulnerable young populations, including young women and adolescent girls, LGBTQI individuals, persons with disabilities, and young people living with HIV and AIDS. These recommendations are progressive, measurable, and based on evidence.

The journey has not always been easy. A small, but vocal, opposition made up of non-youth participants have attempted to intimidate and censor young people during this forum. Many people could easily have been intimidated into silence by this group, but thankfully the youth at the Global Forum refused to back down. There is too much at stake.

The “Staying Healthy” recommendations were developed as part of a consultative process following a lively plenary. In his speech, UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin encouraged young people to continue questioning the status quo, stating that young people are not only the present but the future. He discussed a number of issues impacting the sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people, including meaningful participation, gender equality, ending early and forced marriage, unintended pregnancy, maternal mortality, and the needs of both married and unmarried adolescents. Osotimehin described the process of meeting the sexual and reproductive health and human rights of young people as “A journey of 1,000 miles [that] starts with the first step.”

Indonesian Health Minister Nafsiah Mboi also spoke at the plenary and was met with rousing applause when she stated that, “We have the responsibility to fulfill and promote the health and human rights of young people,” that, “Young people need to be empowered in all aspects of their life,” and that, “It is a fundamental human right of adolescents and youth to access comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education and services.” In Indonesia, there are more than 65 million young people aged between 15 and 24 years old and only 21 percent of them have comprehensive knowledge regarding HIV/AIDS. Sexual transmission of HIV accounts for the vast proportion of new HIV infections among young people and unmarried girls cannot access contraception. Despite these facts, Mboi stated she believes that “The government has an obligation to provide education and services on sexual and reproductive health that are equitable, affordable, and accessible.” For the tens of millions of Indonesian young people in need of information, services, and protection of their human rights, we are optimistic when she says that “You can count on me, I won’t let you down.”

I am thrilled that the final consolidated “Staying Healthy” recommendations articulate a clear, comprehensive, and human-rights based vision as to where the global community needs to focus attention and resources to secure the health and human rights of all young people, and in particular the most marginalized and vulnerable which include adolescent girls and LGBTQI individuals.

These young forum participants deserve our applause for remaining steadfast that this must remain a youth-led and youth-driven process. They stood strong as did UNFPA, which made it clear in various ways that this is indeed intended to be a youth-led and youth-driven process. Displeased with the final consensus recommendations consolidated from the 15 Staying Healthy breakout sessions, the vocal minority of non-youth unconstructively confronted forum participants, after the recommendations were presented during the plenary. During my own breakout session, this same minority consistently opposed suggestions concerning individual rights, and access to safe abortion and contraception.

In contrast to this small group, many other government and non-youth forum participants from around the world stood out as great allies to the youth participants in support of this set of recommendations. The final “Staying Healthy” recommendations will be released as part of a consolidated set of recommendations including the other forum themes: “Decent Work,” “Sexuality, Family and Rights,” “Education,” and “Leadership and Meaningful Participation.” We at the International Women’s Health Coalition look forward to sharing the final recommendations with you when they are released. Stay tuned!

The numbers are staggering. Every year, 10 million girls under the age of 18 enter early and forced marriages, usually to men much older than they are. By becoming a child bride, a girl gets nearly every odd stacked against her.

This epidemic received much-needed attention last month during the first-ever International Day of the Girl Child. At events worldwide, government leaders and influentials acknowledged that early and forced marriage is a grave violation of girls’ human rights. Indeed, these girls are powerless within their families and societies, and experience strong disadvantages to their education and health.

But to end child marriage, we need more than one day. We need real action both at the international policy level and at the local level where it affects girls the most. We must prioritize the promotion of girls’ empowerment to give them a chance to succeed. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said on the inaugural Day of the Girl Child, “we call on the international community to promise a different life to girls — a life of their choosing.”

Thankfully, local organizations around the world are working in developing communities to do just that.

One example of a community organization successfully working towards this goal is APAD – in English, the Association for the Promotion of the Independence and Rights of the Girl Child.

Led by survivors of child marriage, APAD works to make sure girls like them have a choice and a chance. APAD members are not only survivors; they are leaders in the fight for the elimination of early and forced marriage in the extreme north of Cameroun. By working within their own community, they have the unique knowledge and skills that enable them to effectively enact change. Learn more about the work of APAD by watching the video below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Support grassroots groups working to end child marriage. Give to our partner APAD, directly through IWHC’s campaign on GlobalGiving.org – especially during the month of November, when APAD competes to win a featured spot on Nike’s Girl Effect campaign. Winners also receive a share of the Girl Effect Fund, which raised $375,000 last year.

To win, APAD needs as many people as possible to make donations this month. It’s not about how much you give, but about how many people give. Will you help support the fight against child marriage?

The fall is in full swing and so are we at the International Women’s Health Coalition!

We continue to push the U.S. Government to take greater, concerted, and strategic action to prevent the early and forced marriage of millions of girls in key countries and to support the more than 60 million girls who are already married. It goes without saying that global development goals will not be achieved without women and girls, and that women and girls cannot thrive when they are married off as children, against their will, and often to much older men. Yet in a number of countries around the globe today, more than 40% of girls are married before the age of 18. Our colleagues at the Ford Foundation put together a fascinating report on the situation around the world.

On October 11, 2012, the world marked the first International Day of the Girl with many events around the world, including Too Young to Wed, a haunting exhibition by photographer Stephanie Sinclair. IWHC, as co-chair of the U.S. chapter of Girls Not Brides: the Global Partnership to End Child Marriage, collaborated with organizations around the world to raise the profile of this issue.

A day before, on October 10, I participated in a small closed door meeting at the State Department in Washington, DC that included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of the Elders, Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), and Luis Ubiñas, President of the Ford Foundation. It was a special thrill to meet Tutu – such a humble and inspiring man! Shortly thereafter, Secretary Clinton announced some welcomed steps, such as a USAID-funded project to get girls into schools in Bangladesh and a one-year program to keep girls in schools in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Still, we had hoped for quicker and more decisive action from the U.S. Government – these girls should not and cannot wait! Other commitments were also announced on that day – $25 million from the Ford Foundation and $20 million from UNFPA to prevent child marriage, and $39 million from the MacArthur and Mastercard Foundation for girls’ education. There is still time for the U.S. government to do its part. We will keep pressing the Administration to provide the leadership and resources these girls needs to live healthy and just lives.

We’ve also received positive news from our partner and grantee MYSU – Mujer y Salud en Uruguay (Woman and Health in Uruguay). After a 12-year battle, the Uruguayan Congress passed a bill last week that will allow abortions on any ground in the first trimester of pregnancy, and President Mujica just signed it into law. True, the law continues to stigmatize abortion and contains odious provisions that will force women to “explain the circumstances that surrounded the conception…”(!) to their doctor, go before a hospital committee to hear about “alternatives to abortion,” and endure a five-day waiting period. Nevertheless, this is a very significant step in Latin America, where women still face severe legal restrictions to safe abortion except in Mexico City, Guyana, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. IWHC first gave a grant to MYSU for this work in 1999, and we have supported them steadfastly through the many twists and turns along the way. Two years ago, for example, a more liberal law passed the Uruguayan Senate, only to be vetoed at the last minute by then President Tabare. MYSU and their allies have their work cut out for them to make certain the new law is implemented in such a way that barriers to safe abortion are removed, not reinforced. Social and policy change does require patience and staying the course!

For more news, follow IWHC and me on Twitter at @IntlWomen and @francoisegirard, or go to our website www.iwhc.org

Best regards,

In February, I was honored to become the third president in the International Women’s Health Coalition’s 28-year history.  My first 100 days are soon coming up, and I am simply awed by the work of the Coalition and its courageous and visionary partners in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

Let’s take, for example, our work to end early and forced marriage. This is one of the many battles we fight to support women’s and girls’ rights and health, often in the face of regressive forces aligned against women’s rights and health.

At the local level – In Cameroun, almost half of the girls under 18 are married off by their fathers, often against their will. These early marriages usually end girls’ education and put them at very high risk of complications and death in pregnancy and childbirth. IWHC supports APAD (Association for the Promotion of the Rights and Autonomy of Women and Girls), a local organization that educates communities about the intrinsic human rights of girls, including the right to choose when and whom to marry. Led by young women who escaped or avoided early and forced marriage, APAD empowers survivors and works to stop these marriages before they occur. They do this by building skills for young women, changing cultural values through collaboration with religious and traditional leaders, and educating parents.

In Washington, DC – As a leader of Girls Not Brides: The US Partnership to End Child Marriage, IWHC commends the United States Senate for passing the International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act, which is a rare victory for women and girls. This is a critical step in upholding the rights of adolescent girls around the world, and in shielding them from the harmful practice of child marriage, which often has devastating consequences for girls, their families and their communities. We now look to the Administration to ensure that sufficient attention and resources are directed to girls most in need to prevent more marriages from occurring and to support married adolescents. Ending early and forced marriage is key to ensuring the health and rights of girls and women and a higher standard of living for them, their families, and their country.

At the global level – With women and youth from around the world, IWHC is fighting to ensure that international agreements include funding for important programs that save women’s and girls’ lives and protect their rights and health. These include contraceptives; maternity care; access to HIV services; and age-appropriate sexuality education, which teaches gender equality and provides accurate health information to young people aged 10 to 24 who often have little, or no, understanding of their bodies.

Leading IWHC is a great responsibility and I am indebted to its former presidents, Joan Dunlop and Adrienne Germain, for their vision and dedication to women’s rights and health.  In the upcoming year, I look forward to building on their legacy and that of our partners.

Controlling one’s body and fertility is key to everything else in a woman’s life.  Please support us generously, so we can do even more.  Thank you.

Sincerely,

Françoise Girard
President, International Women’s Health Coalition

Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) are steadfast champions on this issue and deserve immense praise for their leadership to ensure this bipartisan legislation passed. Please take a moment and thank them for their work to end early and forced marriage. We now look to the Administration to do its part to ensure that sufficient attention and resources are directed to girls most in need to prevent more marriages from occurring and to support married adolescents. Together, we can all do our part to end this practice and secure the basic human right of all people to decide if, when, and whom they marry.