Girls Not Brides – The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage
CASABLANCA, MOROCCO – Progress towards ending child marriage needs to accelerate, warned hundreds of civil society organisations gathered in Casablanca this week for a meeting of Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage. Over 250 grassroots activists from 63 countries working on the frontlines of child marriage urged the international community to step up their efforts to end a practice that affects 15 million girls every year.
Over 700 million women alive today were married as children. That is 10% of the world’s population. In the developing world, one in three girls are married off before the age of 18, depriving them of their right to education, health and a life free from violence. Child marriage holds back not just girls, but their families, their communities and their countries’ development too.
