END CHILD MARRIAGESOUTH ASIA HEADLINE RESULTS 2018 - 2021

Child marriage is declining in South Asia. In 2015, at the beginning of the last Strategic Plan, it was estimated that 45 per cent of women aged 20-24 had married before the age of 18: that figure has now fallen to 30 per cent. It was also estimated that, by 2030, 35 per cent of young women aged 20-24 would have married as a child but, because of the accelerated reduction, the estimate is now 20 per cent.

But we still need to focus on ending this harmful practice because structures of gender and patriarchy and age-based discrimination continue to fortify child marriage. The child population in the region is large, demanding similarly large-scale interventions. As well as engaging with governments, we require population-wide approaches to reach millions of people.

Creating a positive legal and policy environment

SOUTH ASIA

The South Asia Initiative to End Violence against Children (SAIEVAC) adopted a Regional Action Plan to End Child Marriage in August 2014. This plan sees reforming legislation, improving access to services, empowering children, advocacy and monitoring to be important steps towards ending child marriage. It provides guidance to countries and sub-national entities developing their own plans to end child marriage. The action plan is currently under review, with the intention of updating it for the next five-year period.

NEPAL

The government launched a multi-sectoral National Strategy to End Child Marriage in 2016; a national implementation plan is under development. On 23 March 2016, Nepal hosted its first Girl Summit as part of its commitment to end child marriage by 2030 made at the 2014 London Girl Summit. Girl Summit II - a series of advocacy events at municipal, state and national levels - began in March 2018 and will continue until October 2018. In 2017 two important pieces of legislation were adopted, the National Civil Code Act and the National Penal Code Act, both effective from August 2018. These recognize that the legal age of marriage is 20 years for both girls and boys.

AFGHANISTAN

In 2017, the government adopted a 2017-2021 National Action Plan to Eliminate Early and Child Marriage. Led by the Deputy Ministry for Youth Affairs and the Ministry of Women's Affairs, the plan was also supported by UNFPA, sectorial ministries, United Nations agencies including UNICEF, and international and civil society organizations. The plan, launched in April 2017, seeks to address the complex nature of early and child marriage in Afghanistan. It encourages stakeholders to consider the root causes and to improve access to and delivery of effective, efficient services.

Mobilizing communities for change

BANGLADESH

The Ministry of Women and Children Affairs in Bangladesh is, with UNICEF and partners, implementing a multi-media campaign on ending child marriage across the country with the slogan 'Raise the Beat to End Child Marriage'. This campaign includes radio and television public service announcements, outdoor publicity, printed media and advocacy events. Since its launch in July 2017, the campaign has garnered high interest and visibility - the social media component alone has reached over 25 million Bangladeshis. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNV0pkBjg3U

INDIA

The state of Bihar has a high prevalence of harmful practices such as child marriage and dowry payment. To spread awareness of these damaging social conventions, Nitish Kumar, the Chief Minister, led a human chain some 14,000 km long, composed of hundreds of thousands of people, across Bihar in January 2018. Last year around 40 million people joined a human chain on the same issue and in 2018 the number of people who joined the human chain was even higher.

Providing services to end child marriage

BANGLADESH

The government has launched a National Action Plan to End Child Marriage and has been supporting 5,000 community-based adolescent clubs. These clubs, run by the Ministry of Women and Children, discuss and address harmful social practices like child marriage. The government also operates two helplines (1098 and 109) to combat violence against women and children; it also provides outreach services to women and children to stop child marriage.

AFGHANISTAN

UNICEF supports the government to deliver on its commitments under the Asia Pacific Regional Action Framework to ensure universal civil registration and vital statistics by 2024. This includes a more specific commitment to universal birth registration as a sustainable intervention to combat child marriage. UNICEF and the mobile phone operator Telenor have joined forces to use mobile technology to make it easier to register births - more or less in real time - in Sindh and Punjab provinces.