Amplifying the Voices of Girls and Boys in Early Child and Forced Marriage (ECFM)
Programs and partnerships
Lead institution(s)
Summary
While there is a growing body of information available about child marriage globally, relatively little comparative work has been done to examine its different manifestations, experiences and impacts in different settings.Read more
While there is a growing body of information available about child marriage globally, relatively little comparative work has been done to examine its different manifestations, experiences and impacts in different settings. The majority of studies have explored its causes and consequences for girls in south Asia, and to a lesser extent, in sub-Saharan Africa. Empirical research in many parts of east and southern Africa is still limited, as it is for nearly all of Latin America.
The Governance and Justice program has developed a portfolio of five projects on Early Child and Forced Marriage (ECFM), spanning ten countries across West and East Africa, South Asia and Latin America. Each of the projects have designed and are implementing differing research and/or interventions with the overall aim to influence policy, practice, research or innovations that foster transformative changes in the lives of girls, women and communities. Along these lines, each project promises success in meeting their individual objectives; however, a role and process for joining up the ECFM projects to consolidate and amplify their collective findings is currently missing.
The proposed consolidation project is a timely, much-needed and exciting opportunity to provide a critical, comparative perspective on ECFM, capable of speaking to, reaching and influencing a wider audience beyond the individual project countries. In so doing, it aims to promote collective learning and improved research, practice and policy at the national, regional and international level. This consolidation piece will be co-lead by Young Lives at the University of Oxford and Child Frontiers.