Joint Statement on Defending Girls’ Rights on Ending Child Marriage in the SADC Region
Girls Not Brides and partners call for unified action in SADC region to end child marriage, urging a minimum marriage age of 18 and harmonised legal frameworks.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is a Regional Economic Community comprising 16 Member States; Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Following on from the 2024 Regional Convening on the SADC Model Law, Girls Not Brides, the Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum (SADC PF), Plan International, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), UNICEF and Hivos made a commitment to strengthen our partnership to ensure that collectively, the SADC region continues to experience a decline in child marriage rates.
As a key commitment, Girls Not Brides, Plan International, UNFPA, UNICEF, and Hivos, participated in the 56th Plenary Assembly Session of the SADC PF, themed “Leveraging Technology and Innovation for Smart, Inclusive, and Responsive Parliaments in the SADC Region.” As part of this session, the collaborative partners conducted a side event and issued a joint statement.
The primary aim of these initiatives was to drive the harmonization of legal frameworks across the region to protect children and young women better. Specifically, this included addressing inconsistencies within countries with dual legal systems that create contradictions between customary and statutory laws. The ultimate goal is to establish a uniform minimum marriage age of 18 across all SADC countries, with no exceptions, thereby ensuring a cohesive legal stance against child marriage.
The goal of the side event and the joint statement was to secure support from regional policymakers for effectively domesticating the Model Law and committing to sustainable, cohesive strategies to end CEFMU. As a partnership, we were able to assess progress, facilitate unified action and build on commitment.
Read the joint statement as we anticipate and look forward to strengthened partnerships and accelerated progress in the SADC region in 2025.
Girls Not Brides thanks our partners - SADC PF, Plan International, UNICEF, UNFPA and Hivos – for this collaboration and for our future collaborations. We would also like to give special thanks to the host of the 56th Plenary Assembly Session of the SADC PF, the Zambian Government, specifically the Zambia National Assembly for facilitating our participation and for showing exemplary leadership when it comes to ending child marriage in the SADC region.
In the time it has taken to read this article 22 girls under the age of 18 have been married
Each year, 12 million girls are married before the age of 18
That is 23 girls every minute
Nearly 1 every 2 seconds