International Day of the Girl: End child marriage and invest in girls' rights

An estimated 68 million child marriages have been averted over the past 25 years, according to the United Nations and UNICEF. Over the same period the share of girls married before their 18th birthday has fallen from one in four to one in five, on figures from the UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to End Child Marriage.

Today, 11 October, is the International Day of the Girl, and the theme for 2026 is "End child marriage and invest in girls' rights". The UN says it came out of consultations with girls, girls' organisations and girl-led networks, along with civil society groups and UN partners, who called for urgent action on child marriage.

More than 12 million girls are still married before 18 every year, roughly one every three seconds, and on UNICEF's 2026 estimates about 650 million women and girls alive today were married as children. The UN credits the progress so far to investment in girls' education, legal reform and social protection. Taken further, the same approach would end it: a legal marriage age of 18 with no exceptions, girls kept in school, and steady money for the programmes that reach them.

South Asia and India Drove the Fall in Child Marriage

When UNICEF reported a sharp decline in 2018, most of it came from South Asia. A girl's risk of marrying before 18 there had dropped from nearly 50 per cent to 30 per cent in a decade, in large part because of progress in India. UNICEF put the change down to more girls in education, government investment in adolescent girls and strong public messaging that child marriage was illegal and harmful. Ethiopia, once among the five countries in sub-Saharan Africa with the most child marriage, cut its rate by a third over the same ten years.

UNICEF's 2023 analysis found South Asia still driving the global decline and on course to end child marriage in about 55 years. The region was also still home to 45 per cent of the world's child brides, and India alone accounted for a third of the global total.

In November 2025 the Global Programme, writing with the global partnership Girls Not Brides and the Girls First Fund, attributed the 25-year fall to targeted programmes for girls and their communities, rising incomes, and public spending on education and poverty reduction.

Sub-Saharan Africa Has the Highest Child Marriage Rate, at 31 Per Cent

Child marriage prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa stands at 31 per cent, the highest of any region, the UN says. UNICEF's 2023 analysis put the region more than 200 years from ending the practice at the pace it was then moving, with rapid population growth and repeated crises expected to push the number of child brides up there while numbers fell elsewhere. Latin America and the Caribbean was falling behind as well, on course for the second-highest regional level by 2030.

Girls in fragile settings were twice as likely as the average girl to become child brides, UNICEF found in 2023. For every ten-fold increase in conflict-related deaths, the number of child marriages rose by 7 per cent, and the Covid-19 pandemic had already cut the number of marriages averted since 2020 by a quarter.

Child marriage among boys runs at one sixth of the rate among girls, according to UNICEF, and nearly one in four girls aged 15 to 19 who have ever been married or had a partner have experienced intimate partner violence.

At the global level, UNICEF calculated in 2023 that reductions would have to be 20 times faster to meet the Sustainable Development Goal of ending child marriage by 2030.

A Marriage Age of 18 With No Exceptions Closes the Parental Consent Route

Several countries that have changed their laws in recent years had allowed children younger than 18 to marry with a parent's consent. The newer laws remove that route, and some also cover informal unions, which UNICEF's figures count alongside formal marriages.

Colombian law, in effect since 1887, allowed children to marry from 14 with their parents' consent. Law 2447 of 2025, passed after nearly two decades of debate and nine bills, bans any marriage or de facto union in which either partner is under 18. Colombia ranks 20th in the world for the number of girls married or in unions before the age of 15, UN News reported when Congress approved the bill. "Child marriages and early unions are understood as harmful practices that not only lead to gender violence but also cause the victims, especially girls, to fall into poverty," Andrea Tague Montaña, gender and development officer at UNICEF in Colombia, told UN News.

Sierra Leone's Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2024 sets the minimum age for marriage "of whatever kind" at 18 and amends the Christian, Muslim and civil marriage laws to match. It repeals parts of the 2009 law on customary marriage, forbids parents and guardians to consent to a child's marriage, and also bans cohabiting with a child. Marrying a child is punishable by at least 15 years in prison, a fine, or both, and anyone who conducts or attends the ceremony also commits an offence. Anyone married as a child before the Act can petition to have the marriage annulled, and a judge can order the adult spouse to pay compensation.

In the Dominican Republic, where women face child marriage, teen pregnancy and an abortion ban, the Civil Code was amended in January 2021 to state that people under 18 may not marry under any circumstances.

England and Wales raised the minimum age to 18 on 27 February 2023, ending marriage at 16 and 17 with parental consent. It is now a criminal offence, carrying up to seven years in prison, to cause a child to marry in any circumstances, including in a "traditional" ceremony that is not legally binding. The Act covers England and Wales only, because marriage law is devolved. In 2021 the government's Forced Marriage Unit gave advice or support in 118 cases involving victims under 18.

Keeping Girls in School Lowers Their Risk of Marrying Young

Girls who marry before 18 are less likely to stay in school, UNICEF says, and the 2025 Global Programme brief describes the same link in the other direction: programmes that keep girls in school longer reduce their likelihood of marrying young. The UN puts the number of girls out of school at 133 million, and almost four in ten adolescent girls and young women do not finish upper secondary school. Girls aged 15 to 19 are twice as likely as boys to be out of education, employment or training, UNICEF says. In fragile and conflict-affected countries, girls are nearly 90 per cent more likely to be out of secondary school than girls in stable ones, which raises their risk of child marriage.

“We've proven that progress to end child marriage is possible. It requires unwavering support for vulnerable girls and families.”

— Catherine Russell, UNICEF Executive Director, May 2023

Catherine Russell said this when UNICEF published its 2023 analysis, and added: "We must focus on keeping girls in school and making sure they have economic opportunities." The Global Programme, which UNICEF and UNFPA launched in 2016, supported nearly 9.8 million adolescent girls to enrol in, return to or stay in school in 2025, and reached more than 7.3 million with life skills training or comprehensive sexuality education.

Aid Cuts Left the UN Child Marriage Programme Targeting 4 Million Fewer Girls in 2025

The Global Programme's November 2025 brief says major donors have cut development and humanitarian aid since early 2025, and that targeted funding to end child marriage had been falling steadily since 2019. In 2024 the programme received $21.1 million from its donors against a fundraising target of $37.4 million, 56 per cent of what was planned. It reached 16 million girls with empowerment programmes that year and had to target 4 million fewer in 2025.

In Ethiopia, UNICEF partnerships funded by the programme were reduced in the Gambella and Somali regions, some local organisations closed their operations in parts of the country, and a voice-response phone service that gave information to girls at risk and support to victims was shut down. More girls dropped out of school as a result, the brief says.

The brief calls on donors to protect targeted funding to end child marriage and, where they can, increase it. It also calls on governments to commit their own budgets to prevention and to adolescent girls, and on philanthropic foundations to make girls a central priority in their giving.

Despite the cuts, the programme reported that more than 14 million people took part in community discussions on child marriage and girls' rights in 2025, and that several of the countries where it works recorded declines in child marriage.