Child Marriage South Asia An Evidence Review

Abstract

The topic of child marriage is generating high global interest, as evidenced by a joint initiative of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The joint Global Programme to Accelerate Action to End Child Marriage and related initiatives is particularly salient in South Asia. Scholars and practitioners alike are engaged in research on a wide array of topics in the region ranging from national level trends and legal frameworks to rigorous evaluations of programming to in-depth qualitative examinations of subnational cultural practices and changes in the agency and empowerment of girls. In 2016, UNICEF and UNFPA hosted an expert group meeting to discuss the prevailing evidence and identify opportunities for future work. Since then, research and publications on the topic have proliferated, resulting in significant growth in the understanding of the phenomenon of child marriage, and warranting this review. What follows is a summary of that process, a rapid evidence review of child marriage programmes, policies, developments and debates in South Asia. The review was not intended to be comprehensive. It brings together lessons from materials such as peer reviewed journal articles, policy documentation from government and international agencies, and quality grey literature (including NGO reports and evaluations) produced since 2014. Rates of child marriage across the region are falling, but the practice continues to be widespread and often concentrated in particular geographic regions or among certain cultural groups. Much of this review is focused on identifying successes and lessons learned from them as well as missteps or setbacks and how these might be avoided in the future. The review examines a growing awareness and understanding that the problem of child marriage is not only one of poverty that can be fixed through conditional cash transfers, or simply an issue of social norms. In many places, child marriage is a deeply held social and cultural practice that intersects with restrictive gender and social norms, access to education and health resources, coherent national legal frameworks that intersect with and reflect the cultural and religious institutions underpinning child marriage, intimate partner violence, and more. Viewing child marriage as part of a system that rests on patriarchal attitudes and devalues girls’ and women’s’ agency alongside poverty, perceptions of vulnerability, and a pervasive desire to conform to perceived norms – often while ignoring personal beliefs or knowledge of adverse effects – exerts significant effects on the ability of programming and legal frameworks to support young girls and prevent early marriage. An important change from the 2016 meeting is the advancement of measurement and evaluation. The completion of several randomized control trials (RCTs) on child marriage programming provide answers, but more often than not raise further questions regarding what sort of interventions are appropriate for which groups and what are the associated unintended consequences. Acknowledging the significant heterogeneity within countries, more focused and in-depth qualitative work has revealed novel findings and given nuance to strongly held beliefs on child marriage. These traditionally held truisms have in the past hampered programming from reaching its full potential. Moving forward with an increased focus on acknowledging heterogeneity and identifying the correct tool to measure and evaluate a phenomenon is an important evolution in child marriage research.