Impact evaluation report: On 5-years of “Her Choice: Building child marriage-free communities

Objectives

The impact evaluation aimed to assess what the five-year Her Choice programme achieved in creating child-marriage-free communities in 10 countries in Africa and South Asia. It sought to measure trends in key outputs, outcomes and impact indicators across baseline, midline and endline, focusing on girls’ control over marriage decisions and reductions in marriage before age 18. It also examined how different stakeholders perceived programme effects and explored how Covid-19 might influence progress on child marriage

Findings

The study finds that the programme expanded SRHR education, improved girls’ knowledge and increased their confidence to speak out about their rights and against child marriage. In most countries more girls were enrolled in school, more teachers were trained on SRHR and more health workers and facilities provided youth-friendly services, with better referral systems between schools and clinics.

Community leaders were increasingly trained and reported speaking publicly against child marriage, and many communities developed by-laws to prevent the practice. Across almost all countries a higher share of girls at endline reported that they could decide if, when and whom to marry, and in most settings the proportion of 12–17-year-old girls who were married declined, with particularly striking reductions where baseline child marriage rates were highest. Stakeholders commonly perceived a fall in child marriage, alongside improved SRHR knowledge and school attendance for girls, although progress remained uneven and vulnerable to economic insecurity and the effects of Covid-19.

Recommendations

The report recommends that child marriage programmes use a holistic approach that works simultaneously with girls, families, community leaders, schools, health services and local government. Future efforts should move beyond individual choice and explicitly address structural drivers of child marriage, including poverty, gendered violence, limited education and harmful norms about girls’ sexuality.

The authors call for nested approaches that link comprehensive sexuality education with genuinely youth-friendly health services, sustained attention to birth registration and stronger collaboration between civil society and government. They also highlight the need for further qualitative and participatory research on changing gender norms, more robust evidence on how economic empowerment affects child marriage, and long-term monitoring of how Covid-19 and related shocks may reverse gains in delaying and preventing child marriage.