Skip to main content

Tomorrow is the International Day of the Girl: a day to reflect on how girls are doing the world over and what is holding them back. We now know that a fundamental factor to determine whether a girl can enjoy her rights throughout her life is at what age she gets married. Last year, the United Nations projected that if nothing changes, 142 million girls under age 18 in developing countries will marry between 2011 and 2020.

A girl who wants to escape a marriage may be subject to violence, by her husband, his family, as well as her own, as we documented in South Sudan and Afghanistan. She will be at a higher risk of maternal death or suffering grievous harm to her health in childbirth. She will most likely be taken out of school, unable to continue her education. And stillbirths and infant deaths are 50 percent higher when women and girls under age 20 become pregnant.

Child marriage is not going to be easy to end, especially when we get to the practical level. Family matters are often sensitive, and financial and security systems in some communities rely on girls being married off to the “right” family at an early age. But you only have to listen to the imams taking a stand against child marriage in this Human Rights Watch video on Yemen to be hopeful. Around the world, groups, activists, health workers, religious clerics, young people, teachers, and many more are rising up and working hard to end early marriage, including the hundreds of member organizations of Girls Not Brides in over 50 countries.  

Human Rights Watch along with Girls Not Brides has successfully pushed for the first-ever UN Human Rights Council resolution that firmly places child marriage on the agenda of the UN in Geneva.  We are also pushing for a new in-depth resolution from the UN General Assembly in the coming year, ultimately to create a global consensus to end the practice. At the same time, we will continue to support the efforts of those in Yemen, Afghanistan, South Sudan and elsewhere, to demand changes in law and practice to give girls a chance to have full opportunities in their lives.

As Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkol Karman said in the same Human Rights Watch video: “We know that the goal of our popular, peaceful revolution was to fix societal problems. Not only political problems, but also social problems, and most importantly child marriage.” Ending child marriage is not a separate issue from the larger problems facing many countries today – it’s deeply connected to the economic and social development of nations.

Your tax deductible gift can help stop human rights violations and save lives around the world.