Child Marriage Learning Partners Consortium

What is the Consortium?

The Child Marriage Learning Partners Consortium is a partnership of researchers, programme implementers, and advocates who have worked to fill gaps in knowledge of child marriage and its drivers and solutions in specific contexts. The Consortium’s collective aim is to foster coordinated, evidence-driven, context-specific action to end child marriage.

Who is part of the Consortium?

In 2020-2021, the Consortium convened seven research, advocacy, and implementation partners for a global approach: Fraym, Girls Not Brides, Iris Group, The GIRL Center at the Population Council, Unchained At Last, UNICEF, and University of California San Diego – Center on Gender Equity and Health.

What does it do?

The Consortium produced and shared resources and research to help to fill gaps in the child marriage knowledge and evidence base. Among other things, partners have:

• Developed new ways of conceptualising the drivers of child marriage that can help inform efforts to prevent and respond to the practice;
• Reviewed global child marriage trends, with a focus on countries that have seen steep declines in recent years;
• Analysed how social norms in diverse communities can impact married girls’ lives;
• Produced local maps that identify child marriage hotspots in several South Asian and sub-Saharan African countries;
• Produced political economy analysis that offer insights for child marriage policies and programming in eight South Asian and sub-Saharan African countries;
• Considered the short-term, and projected the long-term, impacts of COVID-19 on child marriage;
• Gathered state-level data to unpack the prevalence of child marriage in the United States.

The work of the Consortium is summarised in a comprehensive synthesis brief.