Mapping Early Marriage In West Africa: A Scan of Trends, Interventions, What Works, Best Practices, and the Way Forward

This 33-page report shares findings of a study mapping early marriage in West Africa, examining trends in the practice over 12 years in 16 countries and providing information on the current status of the problem and efforts to combat it. Countries include Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. The report also shares best practices and lessons learned that emerged from a review of existing interventions and evaluations. According to the report, many initiatives use advocacy and community mobilisation as a main strategy, but states that these and other intervention areas would benefit from increased awareness, better coordination, integrated strategies, and monitoring and information sharing.

The report first discusses the context of and reasons for the persistence of child marriage in West Africa. One of the major reasons cited is poverty as children are considered economic burdens, school fees as unaffordable, and girls are seen as a potential source of dowry income. Cultural tradition and conflict are also factors, however in short, many parents simply do not view early marriage as a problem.

The research examines the relationship between age at first marriage and primary school attendance or completion; female labor force participation rates; and urban/rural residence. It also looks at the fact that "most of the West African countries with high child marriage rates are also among the countries with the world’s highest rates of maternal mortality and adolescent births, and the lowest contraceptive prevalence rates" - making girls vulnerable to multiple reproductive health problems.

In terms of current interventions, of 111 major interventions to end early marriage only 10 programmes addressed early marriage as their stated objective, with indicators tracked and evaluated. The remaining interventions addressed early marriage either indirectly or as a secondary priority, without tracking the results. Over a third of the programmes (43) used advocacy and community mobilisation as the main strategy. Other strategies were girls’ education, fistula interventions, adolescent empowerment, and economic strengthening, among others.

The study highlights the following best practices (as excerpted from the executive summary):

• "In education programmes, 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; and school-to-work elements.
• In advocacy and community mobilisation programmes, 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."

A number of ongoing challenges were identified, with failure of political will to enforce child protection and child rights as a major hindrance. Other challenges include "widespread cultural pushback against sexuality education; weak research and poor monitoring and evaluation studies; poor partnership-building strategies; vertical rather than integrated programming; and underfunding. Poor-quality evaluations or their entire lack have been a recurring challenge in establishing interventions."

Despite some study limitations, this report offers a number of different recommendations on three levels – law and rights; policy and institutional frameworks; and programmes, projects and actions. The authors state that successful efforts against early marriage in West Africa must operate at all three levels:

Law and Rights

A number of recommendations focus on promoting coordination, for example, establishing a coordinating agency with responsibility for child rights and protection, supporting regional networks of community service organisations, and strengthening regional gender and child rights networks. In terms of legal approaches, the report recommends to "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" as well as increase awareness in the legal academic community. It also suggests engaging with media, working with national television and print media to showcase and track decisions and feedback from the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and the Economic Community of West African States Court, as well as the compliance of national governments.

Policy and the Institutional Framework

The report recommends strengthening government ministries to mainstream, coordinate, and budget for child protection. It also recommends working with traditional and religious leaders to create awareness of laws and policies at the community level. As well, there is a need to "improve the capacity of agencies including social welfare departments, the police, ministries of education and health and the courts to work together to address cases of coerced marriage. Toolkits can be developed for the Anglophone and Francophone West African countries. Trainings should be coordinated by intermediate CSOs."

Programmes, Projects, and Actions

The report states that "while high-level interventions targeting regional agencies may have potential for greater impact, community-level initiatives can also address cultural, economic and environmental barriers." Sub-grants to community-based organisations, campaigns linked to commemorative days (such the Day of the African Child and the Day of the Girl Child), and conditional cash transfers may be used to influence early marriage choices. There is also a need to improve monitoring and a toolkit and working group may assist smaller organisations to do this. It is also recommended to engage Christian and Muslim faith leaders and faith-based organisations in community awareness programmes for conservative community/ faith leaders as well.