Ending child marriage in challenging times - a message from our CEO

Dear friends,

Greetings from Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage. As you are aware, the COVID-19 virus has been declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation, and as a global community we are all affected, personally and professionally.

I want to express our solidarity with all of our members and partners during this challenging time. Rest assured that, along with the Girls Not Brides team across the world, we will maintain our focus on ending child marriage. We won’t let girls at risk of child marriage, or married girls, get left behind. While we don’t know how long the pandemic will last, or indeed what impact it will have in the long term, we do know that we’ll need to be flexible, agile, and adapt so that we can continue our collective work.

Each year, 12 million girls across the world are married before their 18th birthday. We know that in times of crisis, women and girls face even more risks. With millions of girls out of school, they could be left vulnerable to marriage.

We need to work together, to ensure that we do whatever we can to ensure that those girls are protected.

We're so encouraged to see so many of our members and partners sharing resources and trying new ways of working in this challenging time.  As a global partnership, we’re in this together, so let’s continue to share, learn from, and support each other.

Best wishes from the whole Girls Not Brides secretariat,

Faith