In the last minute, 22 girls under the age of 18 were just married
Just this last year, 12 million girls’ childhoods, dreams, and educations were cut short. This is unjust. All children are made in God’s image and are worthy of dignity, respect, and opportunities to thrive. It’s time to protect and empower girls everywhere. It’s time for justice.
Call on governments to ban child marriage, implement existing laws, and fund services to prevent and respond to child marriage.
Poverty and child marriage are closely linked to one another. Other factors that play a role include inadequate enforcement of laws as well as harmful social norms and practices; but gender inequality is at their root.
Worldwide, one in five women aged 20 to 24 were married as children.
Each year, 12 million girls are married before the age of 18.
Nearly 40% of girls in the world's poorest countries are married as children
Empowering women and girls as agents of change and experts on their own lives is crucial to ending child marriage. The key to change isn’t by finding someone to blame — it’s working with communities where the practice is common and walking alongside girls and women, listening to their voices and championing their cause to those in power.
We work to make sure vulnerable girls across the world get to go to a school so they can help transform their own life and their community. When a girl is educated and knows her rights, she’s twice as likely to send her own children to school.
22 more girls are married every minute. We work with parents and communities to train, inform and support them on improving girls' rights. We protect vulnerable girls from FGM and child marriage.
Girls shouldn’t have to miss a week of school every month because of their periods. We ensure schools provide appropriate toilets, giving girls their dignity and privacy, so they can continue to learn. Educated girls are less likely to be married as a child.
We make sure girls have a voice from a young age, so they are able to help shape what happens in their community. Nahomy, pictured here, is a sponsored child who has become Youth Mayor of her area in Honduras.
Families who can earn their own income are more free and better able to afford to send their daughters to school. We train women in skills such as farming, set up savings groups and help them to start businesses.
When you join hands with us, you give girls an education, as well as empowering her community to make lasting improvements. We stand apart with our holistic, long-term approach that changes a child's whole world. Together, let's end child marriage.
Unless we accelerate our efforts to end child marriage, over 100 million more girls will be married in the next 10 years. Due to the secondary impacts of COVID-19, this number will likely be much higher.
70 years
Protecting the vulnerable and fighting poverty
Nearly 100 countries
Working across the world, wherever we're needed
200 million children
Given education, water, food and empowered
