Budget advocacy to end child marriage and promote girls' education in West and Central Africa: Learnings from eight pilot projects

Sustainable child marriage[1] interventions require long-term financing of gender, education and child protection policies.[2] Sustainable financing models require an enabling political environment and strong systems of accountability. Such models have already emerged as a priority in the gender and child protection policy agendas, while budget advocacy has lifted the political profile of child marriage.[3]

Budget advocacy for domestic resource mobilisation could be one of the most efficient approaches to promoting national government ownership of work on child marriage and girls’ education, and a valuable opportunity for civil society organisations (CSOs). However, lack of knowledge of budgeting processes and efforts to end child marriage in West and Central Africa indicate a need to learn from CSOs’ work in practice.

CSOs are well-placed to develop expertise on child marriage and girls’ education, and also to engage with communities where child marriage prevalence is very high. However, they also face considerable challenges in advocating for their governments to shift resources towards the people who need them most, especially girls at risk of child marriage and girls who are – or have been – married (ever-married girls).

Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage considers CSOs – as individual organisations and as collectives – to be essential agents of change who should be at the centre of efforts to address child marriage. Through its engagement with child marriage coalitions across West and Central Africa, Girls Not Brides aims to strengthen budget analysis and advocacy to end child marriage. To this end, Girls Not Brides has supported eight CSOs to implement budget advocacy pilot projects, through a project funded by Education Out Loud.

This report shares learnings from the eight pilot projects, addressing knowledge gaps and contributing to the evidence base on budget advocacy to end child marriage and promote girls' education.

The lessons learned are grouped around six themes and one case study:

1. Consolidating the government’s position as a legitimate leader to end child marriage and promote girls’ education through budget advocacy.
2. Increasing visibility and raising the political profile of child marriage and girls' education by leveraging CSOs’ expertise and capacity building.
3. Fostering community participation in budget advocacy and ownership of solutions.
4. Advancing decentralised budgeting for the elimination of child marriage and the promotion of girls’ education.
5. Promoting evidence uptake from budget analysis to promote evidence-based advocacy.
6. The need to rethink budget advocacy to end child marriage and promote girls’ education in crisis context.

Case study: Youth-led organisations to break the glass ceiling of budget advocacy to end child marriage and promote girls’ education – The case of the Association des Jeunes pour le Développement du Sourou (AJDS) in Burkina Faso 14