Panelists at the UN CSW event
On March 19, the 69th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women hosted a side event called “No Child Left a Bride: Successes & Setbacks in the Global Effort to End Child Marriage” in collaboration with Unchained at Last, an organization dedicated to ending child marriage in the United States. Panelists and attendees came together to share strategies, raise awareness of child marriage worldwide, and celebrate recent wins in Sierra Leone, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic. The event came as the world is just five years away from the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action’s goal of ending child marriage and forced marriage by 2030.
Panelists included Houry Geudelekian, the U.N. Coordinator of Unchained at Last; Fraidy Reiss, founder of Unchained at Last; the Honorable Dr. Isata Mahol, Minister of Gender and Children’s Affairs in Sierra Leone; Mona Sinha, Global Executive Director of Equality Now; Sarah Hendriks, Director of Policy, Programme & Intergovernmental Division for UN Women; Saba Lishan, Senior Technical Officer of the African Child Policy Forum; and Dr. Chelsea Clinton, Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation.
In July 2024, Sierra Leone passed a law to set the minimum age for marriage to 18, wielding criminal penalties against violators to combat the ongoing issue of child marriage, particularly for girls, in the West African nation. Dr. Isata Mahol explained that the government did not stop at legislative solutions, combining the ban with emphases on education, data collection, and community-driven initiatives to ensure that the law is effectively implemented. She spoke on the importance of this issue even in the face of cultural practices, patriarchal systems, and religious beliefs, saying: “For the right(s) of the girl child are the rights of every child in the world.” Colombia’s law setting the marriage to 18 was enacted last month, while the Dominican Republic’s law was passed in January 2021.
Despite these wins for gender equality, the United States still permits child marriage in 37 states as of 2024, which is down from all 50 in 2017. Unchained at Last, an organization founded by Executive Director Fraidy Reiss after her experience with forced marriage, has been campaigning state by state to eliminate legal loopholes that permit this practice. Child marriage typically applies to young girls wed to adult men, and it impacted 300,000 minors from 2000 to 2018 in the United States. Reiss pointed out the interconnectedness of child marriage with similar issues like domestic violence, human trafficking, and access to sexual and reproductive rights, commenting, “We can’t solve those problems if we aren’t solving child marriage.”
189 countries adopted the goal of eliminating child marriage by 2030 at the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in 1995 in Beijing, China. It is part of a larger document, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which is an agenda for women’s empowerment and gender equality. While the panelists at the “No Child Left a Bride” event were proud to share the progress that has been made toward ending early unions, they emphasized that there is still a long way to go. According to Sarah Hendriks, “The world cannot claim progress if girls are still forced into these roles.” The panelists shared a common sentiment: that legislation to ban child marriage must be combined with additional policies, protections, and community engagement to be effective.
In the face of the global backlash against women’s rights, Mona Sinha told attendees that “the rollback of women’s rights in many parts of the world shows us that progress is not guaranteed.” She continued, saying “ending child marriage is not just a goal, it’s a necessity for so many other things: gender equality, economic justice, and the protection of fundamental human rights.” Dr. Chelsea Clinton advised advocates to “…protect where we can, defend where we must, and advance wherever possible” regarding progress made worldwide on eliminating child marriage.
