Child marriage programming and advocacy in conflict- and crisis-affected settings

In this session, we learned more about:

• The Girl Shine programme model – drawing on practical and best guidance for practitioners implementing child marriage interventions in crisis-affected settings.
• Findings from youth-led research and advocacy to address child marriage and girls’ education during crises in Burkina Faso and Niger, with particular attention to girls who have been internally displaced.

Session materials – including notes, recordings and presentations – are available for download below.

Key takeaways

• In humanitarian contexts – as elsewhere – work to support girls should be holistic, multisectoral and multi-dimensional. This means working in partnership with trained team members to:
  • Provide safe spaces for girls to come together, learn and develop their individual and collective power and potential.
  • Engage caregivers and communities around gender equality, gender-based violence (GBV) and child marriage, to build support for girls’ decision-making and access to services, including education.
  • Ensure all girls can access education and other opportunities, adolescent-friendly sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), mental health support, and child protection and GBV services. This includes establishing swift response and referral mechanisms, and considering financial and material support for girls and their families.
• Internally-displaced and refugee girls face additional barriers to education, as emergency education policies fail to match demand, and insecurity leads to school closures, more protectionist attitudes towards girls and the prioritisation of boys’ education. Governments need to include official and non-official reception sites in their policies, strengthen registration systems and provide long-term funding for girls’ access to quality education. Governments and civil society organisations should also consider the additional barriers and risks faced by girls who are married, parenting, have disabilities and/or come from minority religions, ethnicities or LGBTQIA+ groups.
• Collective civil society advocacy needs to be evidence-based and include young people. Young researchers – and especially young women – have a powerful role to play in generating evidence and ensuring it is used to inform child marriage advocacy. Civil society needs to hold governments – including transitional governments – accountable through all stages of a crisis. Advocacy can be catalysed by working through existing networks, including education and child marriage coalitions, and youth networks.

Related resources

• Girl Shine tools and resources, and online training.
• Girls Not Brides, 2020, Child marriage in humanitarian contexts.
• Girls Not Brides, 2023, Preventing conflict-related sexual violence is possible and requires urgent action.
• Girls Not Brides, 2023, 8 ways to address child marriage in conflict- and crisis-affected settings.
• The CRANK, 2022, CRANK research spotlight, Child marriage in humanitarian settings and challenging gender norms to end child marriage.
• The CRANK, 2023, Evidence review: Child marriage interventions and research from 2020 to 2022, Girls Not Brides and the UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to End Child Marriage.
• The CRANK, 2023, CRANK research spotlight: Addressing child marriage and supporting married girls in conflict- and crisis-affected settings, Girls Not Brides and the UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to End Child Marriage.
• The CRANK, 2023, CRANK research meeting: Child marriage in conflict- and crisis-affected settings – Learning from the latest evidence, Girls Not Brides and the UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to End Child Marriage.
• The CRANK, 2023, CRANK research spotlight: How to ensure efforts to address child marriage reach the most marginalised girls, Girls Not Brides and the UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to End Child Marriage.