CRANK global convening, Day 1: Learning from the latest evidence – efforts to address child marriage and support married girls

In this first session of the CRANK global convening, we presented the latest evidence on efforts to address child marriage and support married girls. An expert panel shared what they have learned from the evidence base across themes including girls, families and communities; services and systems; advocacy and accountability; and conflict and crisis.

In this session, we shared information on:

• Reflections on the existing evidence and direction of child marriage research since 2020.
• Key takeaways from the latest evidence base across different thematic areas.
• An expert panel, who will draw on the evidence and programmatic experience to reflect on what works and what doesn’t work.
• Priority areas to accelerate work to end child marriage.

Key Takeaways:

1. The field is moving quickly, and there is a lot of evidence to inform practice. Fora like the CRANK help share information on useful studies, but more support for practitioners to translate evidence into practice is needed.
2. Laws have an important role to play but need to be gender-transformative and implemented alongside broader work to transform social norms. Laws establish an aspiration for society, and create a platform for accountability, resource flows and national discussion that can advance girls’ rights. However, legal advocacy, implementation and enforcement needs to be context-specific, address gender inequality and transform social norms. Without this broader work, legal reform leads to the informalization of child marriage and fails to address the systems that reinforce norms that discriminate against girls and adolescents.
3. We need to continue work on transforming discriminatory social norms, particularly for underserved populations, informed by better contextual understanding of privilege and power. This includes support for married, separated, widowed and divorced girls, and more work with boys and men, traditional and religious leaders and youth networks.
4. Solutions need to be holistic, working across sectors and at scale, because everything is interconnected. Education, livelihoods, sexual and reproductive health and rights and employment are important areas of focus building the economic and political agency of girls and catalysing norms change at scale.
5. There is a lack of evidence in humanitarian settings, but the blurring between humanitarian, development and peacebuilding contexts could be a starting point for a more holistic response.

Speakers included:

• Dr Faith Mwangi-Powell, CEO of Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage
• Nankali Maksud, Coordinator, UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to End Child Marriage
• Margaret E. Greene, Executive Director, GreeneWorks
• Dr Chandra Mouli, Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research, World Health Organization
• Jean Casey, Research and Humanitarian Manager, Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage
• Arwyn Finnie, Senior Data, Evidence and Policy Officer, Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage
• Sajeda Amin, Senior Associate, Population Council
• Ramya Subrahmanian, Chief of Child Rights and Protection at UNICEF-Innocenti
• Dr Nyaradzayi Gumbondzvanbda, Founder and Executive Director, Rozaria Memorial Trust
• Dr Aisha Hutchinson, Lecturer in Social Sciences, King's College London
• Shatha Elnakib Assistant Scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health