Solutions Panorama

Supporting Young
Advocates against
Child Marriage
Featuring:
Rise Up; Girls Empowerment
Network
Where:
Malawi
Time Frame:
2010 – present
DESCRIPTION
Rise Up (previously named Let Girls Lead), through an incubator-style advocacy
training model, works with local leaders who empower girls to advocate for their
rights. According to government statistics, over half the girls in Malawi will be
married by their 18th birthday, with some being married as young as nine or ten;
between 2010 and 2013, 44,000 girls attending primary school dropped out due
to marriage or pregnancy. Rise Up supports local changemakers by providing
training to help them network and develop strategies to scale up their homegrown
solutions to girls’ challenges, including child marriage.
With the local NGO Girls Empowerment Network (GENET), Rise Up trained over 200
girls in the Chiradzulo District of southern Malawi to become advocates. The girls
lobbied 60 village chiefs to ratify and enact bylaws protecting adolescent girls
from early marriage and harmful sexual initiation. These bylaws force men who
marry girls under the age of 21 to give up their land and pay a fee of seven goats.
They also penalize parents who marry off their underage daughters with social
sanctions, including three months of mandatory janitorial service.
IMPACT
The work of Rise Up and partners to fund, train,
and provide ongoing support to village chiefs
to advocate effectively helped lead chiefs in
22 villages to create bylaws that outlaw child
marriage. Since 2011, not a single case of child
marriage has occurred in southern Malawi.
LEARN MORE
Marriage Law in Malawi;
hrw.org
“Let Girls Lead helps to reform a marriage law,”
Stacy Teicher Khadaroo
How Girl Activists Helped Ban Child Marriage;
theguardian.com
Source: Dramatically Reduce Gender-Based
Violence and Harmful Practices policy brief
Photo by Rebecca Jacobson
Since 2011, not
a single case of
child marriage
has occurred in
southern Malawi.
WOMEN DELIVER 2016 CONFERENCE: SOLUTIONS PANORAMA 58