Our Voices, Our Future: Understanding risks and adaptive capacities to prevent and respond to child marriage in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao

This study, undertaken by Plan International and the Women’s Refugee Commission, and implemented in-country by Transforming Fragilities, sought to understand the risks, drivers, and consequences of child marriage among adolescent girls in 4 provinces in BARMM, whose communities have long been affected by environmental hazards, conflict and related displacement. These provinces are: Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, and Sulu. This study, which is part of Plan International and the Women’s Refugee Commission’s (WRC’s) multi-country Child Marriage in Humanitarian Settings Initiative, is an effort to investigate the needs and priorities of adolescents in diverse humanitarian settings to inform evidence-based and practice-informed programming to prevent and respond to girls at risk of child marriage and meet the needs of girls who are already married. The research also investigated the extent to which the existing ecosystem of support, care, and protection for adolescent girls (e.g., family, social workers, teachers and institutions and services) protects girls from child marriage, and meets the needs of married girls.