CRANK research meeting: Learning from this year's evidence reviews – Progress, gaps and priorities on child marriage

The evidence base on child marriage has grown substantially over the last two decades, strengthening programmatic and policy efforts to address child marriage and support married girls. But more and strengthened solutions-orientated research and cross sectoral collaboration is still needed to accelerate progress to end child marriage, improve outcomes for girls and reach the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

In this final Child Marriage Research to Action Network (the CRANK) research meeting of 2023, we reflected on some of the latest contributions to the global evidence base. This included evidence reviews and syntheses conducted to inform the forthcoming WHO guidelines on preventing child marriage, responding to the needs of married girls and increasing access to and uptake of contraception among adolescents; Phase III of the UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to End Child Marriage (Global Programme); and regionally-focused scopings to inform interventions and strategies across Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean – details below.

Drawing on this evidence, we considered the progress made, and implications for more targeted policy change, strengthened interventions and a better understanding of priorities and emerging research gaps.

Key takeaways:

• There is strong evidence showing that strategies emphasising livelihoods skills and training – including financial literacy and vocational training – reduce child marriage and positively impact on girls’ employment and access to/control over resources. They should be accompanied by investment in girls’ education and safe transition into productive employment, with training for girls who are in and out of school. Macro-economic policies are also needed to promote inclusive economic growth and girls’ economic participation.
• There is strong evidence showing cash transfers conditional on schooling are effective in reducing child marriage, but should be included as “add-ons” (rather than single-component interventions) and link to services and systems to deliver at scale. Longer and more frequent exposure to cash transfers lead to greater delays in marriage, so State-run transfers that are part of social protection systems have potential to address child marriage sustainably and at scale. Context – like dowry or bride price practices – and communication are also important, and gender-transformative plus components may support girls to resist unequal social practices. More research on the scalability and importance of targeting high-risk segments of the population is needed.
• Multi-component, multi-level and multisectoral interventions are key to addressing structural issues in the long term. A broader definition of child marriage interventions should encourage links with other sectors – like education, health and violence prevention – to strengthen services, remove barriers to girls’ access/participation and drive change. Making these links can also strengthen the case for governments and donors to include child marriage in other areas of work, with long-term investment.
• Research should be conducted following gender-transformative principles. This means involving end-users – especially girls and women – as partners in research design and implementation, aligning with the larger social change agenda and building alliances to put research to use.

Gaps in the evidence, and opportunities for further research:

• Supporting married girls, including their access to and use of health, education and social services, and connections to community networks and resources. Such interventions should look at sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), violence prevention, educational and economic outcomes, and access to legal and mental health support for ever-married girls. The cost of married girls’ lost education and labour force non-participation is a strong argument for inclusion and investment.
• Social norms change, to gain clarity on what social norms are, pathways to change and how to measure this at the individual and community level. Research should consider the ecological and multi-level effects of programming, and the power of diffusion – where change happens beyond intervention participants. Natural experiments and observational studies may be a valuable source of evidence.
• Conflict- and crisis-affected settings, considering the increased scale and complexity of polycrises comprised of climate change, inflation, COVID-19, conflict and pushback on gender equality.
• The impact of age of marriage laws, which may push girls into informal unions where they are less visible and have fewer social and legal protections; lead to girls being punished for their sexual and marital decisions; be confused with age of sexual consent laws; may not be accessible to girls and may create barriers for their access to other services.

For reflection:

• What are your reactions to the evidence base on what works to address child marriage?
• How have you integrated evidence related to child marriage in your decision-making processes? What barriers have you faced?
• How has the polycrisis influenced your work?

Resources shared:

• UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to End Child Marriage Phase II research strategy, now updated for Phase III (currently in design)
• STAR Initiative child marriage country profiles. The country profiles are on the STAR Initiative to End Harmful Practices webpage.
  • Sierra Leone
  • Mozambique
  • Zambia
• Greene, M. E., Siddiqi, M., and Abularrage T. F., 2023, Systematic scoping review of interventions to prevent and respond to child marriage across Africa: Progress, gaps and priorities.
• Akwara, E. and Chandra-Mouli, V., 2023, Good progress in a number of areas of adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH), but there is much more that needs to be done
• Buchmann, N., Field, E. M., Glennerster, R., Nazneed, S. and Wang, X. Y., 2021, A signal to end child marriage: Theory and experimental evidence from Bangladesh
• Melnikas, A. J., Gaul, G., Pandey, N., Makino, M., Amin, S. and Chau, M., 2023, Do child marriage programs help girls weather shocks like COVID-19? Evidence from the More Than Brides Alliance Intervention
• Training to support research uptake: Geneva Foundation for Medical Education and Research: Courses on sexual and reproductive health and research.

This CRANK research meeting was a space to:

• Consider the implications of an evidence review conducted by the Population Council to inform the forthcoming WHO guidelines on preventing child marriage and responding to the needs of married girls, presented by Sajeda Amin.
• Discuss the results of a forthcoming synthesis paper on what works to prevent and respond to child marriage, conducted by UNICEF Innocenti to inform the Global Programme Phase III’s programmatic and research strategy, presented by Manahil Siddiqi.
• Learn from a recent systematic scoping review of interventions to prevent and respond to child marriage across Africa, and emerging insights from Latin America and the Caribbean, presented by Margaret Greene.
• Collectively consider what recent progress has been made across the child marriage evidence base, and share insights on promising approaches and emerging research gaps and priorities.

The speakers were:

• Sajeda Amin, Senior Associate, Population Council
• Manahil Siddiqi, Global Health Research Scientist, UNICEF Innocenti
• Margaret E. Greene, Executive Director, GreeneWorks

The moderator was:

Dr. Venkatraman Chandra-Mouli. formerly Scientist, Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health at the Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research, World Health Organization; currently working with a number of organisations on adolescent SRHR.