Solutions Panorama

Country-Wide Strategies
to End Child Marriage
Where:
Global, with an example from
Zambia
Time Frame:
Ongoing
DESCRIPTION
Ending child marriage requires a comprehensive response across all sectors;
education alone is not enough. Over the past several years, many countries
have seen a move towards national strategies and nation-wide responses to end
child marriage. These initiatives have the potential to significantly curtail child
marriage globally, as more countries adopt such policies.
National strategies or country-wide initiatives to address child marriage have
begun to emerge in a number of countries, including Egypt, Ethiopia, Nepal, and
Zambia. While many are still in the very early stages of implementation, they
have mobilized public support and interest in the issue and have outlined the
need for multi-sectoral work to both prevent child marriage and respond to its
consequences.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Many stakeholders have a role to play in developing and implementing
comprehensive and multi-sectoral national strategies, including:
• Married girls, to ensure services available to them are appropriate to their needs;
• Young girls and boys, to inform interventions most relevant to them, and
to nurture young leadership development and the development of young
people as responsible citizens;
• Men and boys, to design effective messages to change attitudes towards
child marriage and raise the perceived value of girls more generally;
• Religious and traditional leaders, to help develop their capacity and access
to correct and appropriate information, tools, and resources to end child
marriage
• The media, to raise awareness about strategies, the issue of child marriage,
and to ethically monitor and report on its implementation;
• Law enforcement authorities, to raise awareness, train, and educate police
and law enforcement officials about laws on child marriage, the rights
of girls, and how to respond appropriately to cases of child marriage,
associated harmful traditional practices and cases of violence;
• The private sector and businesses, to inform interventions that provide
economic support and incentives (e.g. microenterprise, livelihoods skills,
etc.) for girls and their families to reduce financial incentives to child
marriage.
On 8 April 2016, the
Government of Zambia
adopted a national
strategy to end child
marriage.
IMPACT
While it is too early to tell the long-term impact
of many of these initiatives, there have already
been some important signs of progress.
Governments have demonstrated public
commitment to working on child marriage, an
issue that has been long absent from national
development agendas. In Zambia, for example,
the process of developing a national strategy
helped to bring stakeholders together from
different provinces and led to the crossgovernment
commitment to tackle the issue.
On 8 April 2016, the Government of Zambia
adopted a national strategy to end child
marriage.
LEARN MORE
Lessons Learned from National Initiatives to
End Child Marriage;
girlsnotbrides.org
Zambia’s National Strategy to End Child
Marriage;
girlsnotbrides.org
Submitted by Plan International
WOMEN DELIVER 2016 CONFERENCE: SOLUTIONS PANORAMA 62