This study scans the situation in West Africa, which has the continent’s worst rates of child marriage: 49 percent of girls under 19 are living in marital unions. Child brides in West Africa are likely to be married at the very early age of 9 to 12 years, the earliest tipping point in the global south. They are also more likely to be illiterate, to be younger at first birth, to give birth to more children over their reproductive lives, to be in a polygamous union and have a lower uptake of modern family planning services than child brides in other zones of Africa and indeed South Asia.
The study consists of a comprehensive desk-based literature review, followed by an in-depth field investigation that captured the knowledge and insights of 218 key informants among NGOs and international development partners; government ministries and agencies with responsibility for programs in this area; and independent experts such as academics, lawyers, graduate students, consultants and international operatives.
Key findings:
In regards to the context of and reasons for the persistence of child marriage in West Africa, the leading indicator is poverty, which drives unemployed parents to regard children as economic burdens, school fees as unaffordable and girls as a potential source of dowry income. Cultural tradition, conflict, state fragility and a general bewilderment by parents and communities about what to do with large numbers of children in the face of a failing education system and a stiffed economy are also determining factors. The failure to view early marriage as a problem is chiefly what accounts for its persistence. Measures aimed at curbing child marriage thus go largely unenforced.
Best Practices
- Integration of programs wherever possible was the overriding indicator of success. In education programs, the best practices were involvement of communities through mass community mobilisation such as radio programming; accurate targeting for direct grants to parents or girls; integrated programming in girls’ lessons; engagement of male faith and cultural leaders; school-to-work elements centers; and literacy support. Other useful practices were improvements to education quality, provision of safe spaces and school clubs for girls.
- In advocacy and community mobilization programs, best practices included public declarations by influential community leaders; male involvement, especially engagement of cultural, community and faith leaders; integrated programming with other approaches; and NGO leadership and networks to implement interventions.
- In economic strengthening, cash transfers to parents, savings and loan schemes, validated registration systems and the use of modern technology to avoid cash leakage were the most effective.
- In adolescent empowerment, the best school-based approaches integrated skill acquisition into mainstream schooling, while those for out of-school teens offered literacy and skill training. HIV/AIDS and sexuality education were effective in raising marriage age for both groups.
- The most useful research programs created toolkits for activists working with target populations and resource packs for evaluators, and documented ways to tell whether projects are suitable for scale-up. Critical feedback to governments was effective in child protection and legal approaches, while adolescent reproductive health efforts worked best when they built partnerships to broaden sexuality education, integrated HIV/AIDS prevention messages into all projects and delivered high-quality confidential services.
- Fistula interventions succeeded most in partnership with government facilities and with ministries of health in training local surgeons, in programs integrating prevention and rehabilitation components, and in applying a Levels-of-Care approach.
Recommendations include:
- Codify provisions to protect girls against forced marriage in customary and Sharia law and to sensitise community judges in those systems, because of continued resistance to provisions against forced marriage in penal law. Establish a coordinating agency with responsibility for child rights and protection and a mandate to incorporate technical expertise and civil society inputs.
- Legislate Children’s Acts that focus on the social responsibilities of the family and the state and recognise age of marriage as part of social protection.
- Support regional networks of community service organizations (CSOs) working to end early marriage within the framework of the Human Rights Commissions common to most West African countries and holding government, citizens and other agencies accountable.
- Scale up and improve delivery of conditional cash transfer pilot projects to improve targeting and reduce leakages.
- Extend monitoring visits to beneficiaries of conditional social protection programs to sensitize families and communities about the rights of girls to education, as in Ghana’s LEAP program.
- Engage Christian and Muslim faith leaders and faith-based organizations in community awareness programs that target conservative community/faith leaders as well as at partners and teachers. This should offer education about the harmful effects of early marriage in the form of a leadership development project. Learning visits to other countries could allow study of alternative ways to mitigate the impact of this harmful traditional practice.
