Citation

Jha S, Kathurima Y, Uribe EL, Nthamburi N. J. Adolesc. Health 2022; 70(3S): S5-S6.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jadohealth.2021.12.009

PMID

35184831

Abstract

As current and former regional coordinators of Girls Not Brides, we have supported and mobilized civil society organizations and advocacy for the global movement to end child marriage. Each of us has worked in one specific region of the world--Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, or Asia--and we have been struck by the hopefulness of progressive regional tools to end child marriage. In Africa, the Member States of the African Union adopted the Maputo Protocol in 2003 as a framework to hold African governments to account on the violation of women's and girls' rights. It specifically sets the minimum age of marriage for women at 18 years, requires marriages to take place with the free will and full consent of both parties, and calls on State parties to ensure "equality between men and women and both are regarded as equal partners in marriage" (Article 6). In South Asia, the South Asian Initiative to End Violence against Children convened member countries of the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation to develop the Kathmandu Call to Action to End Child Marriage in Asia in 2014. In 2016, parliamentarians from 13 countries in the region committed to ending child marriage. In Latin America and the Caribbean, progressive movements have advanced recognition of the individual, economic, and social autonomy of women in the Montevideo Strategy on Gender Equality; and they have highlighted the need to strengthen the exercise of sexual rights and reproductive rights in the Montevideo Consensus of the Regional Conference of Population and Development...

Language: en