Anju Malhotra

The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) this month discussed proven approaches to end child marriage with The Elders, an eminent group of global leaders, during a strategic planning meeting convened by the group in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. ICRW’s Anju Malhotra presented a preview of ICRW’s report, “Solutions to End Child Marriage: What the Evidence Shows,” and helped inform The Elders in their goal to build a global alliance to end child marriage.

The Elders were brought together by former South African president, Nelson Mandela, in an effort to use members’ influence and experience to address some of the world’s most pressing problems. One of the group’s objectives is to promote equality for women and girls, and ending child marriage is an initiative under that umbrella. For the June gathering, The Elders convened representatives from 55 organizations to share information about effective approaches to address child marriage, explore how to give the issue more visibility in global policy and discuss the objectives of forming a global alliance to combat child marriage.

The meeting "would have been incomplete" without ICRW's presence, said Mabel van Oranje, chief executive officer of The Elders. "From the very beginning of The Elders' involvement in this issue, it has been clear that ICRW is a leading organization in this field and has an enormous amount of experience and knowledge."

Malhotra and ICRW’s Priya Nanda were among several experts who presented before like-minded colleagues and four members of The Elders in attendance: Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chairman of The Elders and former chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Dr. Gro Brundtland, Norway’s former prime minister and the ex-director of the World Health Organization; and Graça Machel, a well-known international advocate for women’s and children’s rights and president of Mozambique’s Foundation for Community Development.

The Elders opened the two-day meeting by discussing the scope of child marriage and why they feel it deserves more attention than it currently receives. According to a summary provided by the group, Archbishop Tutu said he was “shattered” to meet Ethiopian women and girls who had married as young as 8 years old. “You can understand something cerebrally,” he said, “but it is not the same when it is translated into flesh and blood.” Child marriage is particularly prevalent in Ethiopia, where nearly half of all girls are married before they turn 18.

ICRW’s involvement with the meeting represents a two-year relationship with The Elders, who have consulted with Malhotra on the issue of child marriage, its consequences, and what works to prevent it. "ICRW has helped us, and the Elders themselves, to better understand the magnitude of the problem," van Oranje said, "and its relationship to other development challenges such as maternal health, education and the empowerment of girls and women."

It's an issue that ICRW has been studying for more than a decade. Among the organization’s current projects that address child marriage or work with child brides is an evaluation of India’s conditional cash transfer program to prevent child marriage, which Nanda directs, and a project in Ethiopia that teaches recently-wedded girls about earning and saving money as well as about reproductive health.

ICRW’s research evidence shows that arming girls with information – about how their bodies work, what sex is, how to make healthy life decisions – is key to preventing early marriage. This approach is most effective when done while simultaneously educating girls’ communities about the issue and creating an environment in which alternatives to early marriage are supported.

Indeed, participants at The Elders meeting agreed that local communities must be on board to end child marriage, and that interventions should be holistic, multi-faceted and rights-based. They said that a global alliance could help accelerate the process and expressed interest in forming national alliances for change, as well.

Malhotra and others also agreed that The Elders should now focus on writing a mission statement for the global alliance and developing a work plan that synergizes the activities of organizations addressing child marriage in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Gillian Gaynair is ICRW’s writer and editor.

The following video features highlights from The Elders’ meeting and their visit with child brides in Ethiopia’s Amhara region:

No single intervention in the lives of girls in developing countries ensures that they will have the chance to live their full potential. But one does stand out as holding great promise: Education.

Attaining an education is widely and consistently linked with economic growth, better health and advancing equality and human rights. Evidence shows that when girls, in particular, have equal access to a quality education, they are more likely to become productive, healthy and empowered citizens, parents and partners. And, when they go to school, families’ and community members’ views of girls change for the better, helping to contribute to more gender-equitable norms and attitudes. These benefits have long been recognized by national governments, multilateral institutions, development practitioners and corporate donors.

Despite this realization, adolescent girls are not being adequately served by the education and international development communities. This is because until recently, programmatic efforts concentrated on just getting girls into school rather than focusing on keeping them there, or ensuring that they learn something. There is increasing recognition that too often, girls drop out of school early because of poverty, or because of parents’ concerns for their safety, or because they are expected to marry, bear children and shoulder domestic responsibilities. They may leave school because the quality of education is low, and the opportunity costs of sending a girl to school for a sub-par education are too high. We are also finding that many girls are not learning much even if they stay in school because the quality is so poor, or because challenging girls is not a high priority.

That said, the next generation of education programs must focus on keeping girls in classrooms, at least to the secondary level. We also must ask ourselves, what are we educating girls to do? We need to ensure that schools help girls develop the skills, knowledge and social networks necessary to navigate the global health, environment and economic challenges they are likely to face as adults in the 21^st century. Instead, we are still at a stage where large numbers of girls leave school uneducated, often stepping into adult roles as wives and mothers much too early, and lacking the ability to prevent the perpetuation of inter-generational cycles of ill health, poverty and inequality. 

One reason that adolescent girls’ needs aren’t being met is because international development programs on education, reproductive health, livelihoods and girls’ empowerment tend to operate in isolation of each other. These groups share common long-term goals, such as improving girls’ autonomy and well-being, but they seldom combine or coordinate strategies and resources. This lack of coordination is hindering progress at a very critical time, as the population of girls in the developing world is at an all-time high.

ICRW wants to change that. With funding from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, we recently convened a two-day consultation of educators, girls’ health, livelihoods and empowerment specialists as well as donors and researchers. Our goal was to address how these varied sectors working on behalf of girls could collaborate to guarantee that girls’ education facilitates healthy, safe and productive transitions to adulthood. We want to ensure that education isn’t only available to girls – especially in poor corners of the world – but that it is also transformative for them. By that I mean that girls finish school not only adept at reading and mathematics, but that they’re also armed with the skills necessary to seek opportunities, demand their rights and earn a living.

The good news is that this call for coordination and shared investment resonates with the various actors in international development. There is an emerging realization that with 600 million – and growing – adolescent girls in the developing world, the education, reproductive health, economic development and girls’ empowerment communities need to work together to ensure that we are reaching girls with the right services at the right time. The consultation at ICRW was the first step in changing that reality by starting to build a joint plan of action among a diverse group of stakeholders. Like ICRW, these groups want to help lead new collaborative efforts in the areas of research, funding and on-the-ground interventions that can be replicated on a larger scale.

Organizations committed to supporting adolescent girls will achieve more by working together than apart from one another.

Anju Malhotra is ICRW’s vice president of research, innovation and impact.