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With the right support, resources and opportunities, the potential of the world’s more than 1.1 billion girls is limitless.
And when girls lead, the impact is immediate and wide reaching: families, communities and economies are all stronger, our future brighter.
Save the Children have been working with girls to realise their rights for over 100 years.
Girls worldwide are uniting to create change in their communities, even in the most challenging environments.
Save the Children supports this by partnering with girl-led groups on their terms. We've collaborated with girls in fragile regions like Yemen and oPT, as well as Bolivia, Colombia, Nigeria, and adapted programs for younger girls in China, Indonesia, Mexico, and Vietnam.
Together with girls at risk of being forced into early marriage, we speak with influential leaders in their communities, who can help them to change harmful customs and oppose child marriages.
Sierra Leone
In Sierra Leone, about one-third of girls are married before the age of 18, robbing them of their childhoods and opportunities to learn, grow, play, and develop.
This year, women and girls across Sierra Leone, joined by Save the Children, successfully campaigned for an historic bill to be passed which criminalises child marriage.
This new bill restores the futures of nearly four million children across Sierra Leone.
Jordan
In 2022 Save the children opened an Adolescent Girls Empowerment Centre at Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan.
The centre is run by and for young women and girls.
It offers many classes to young women and girls from art therapy, self-defence and language lessons, to yoga and advocacy workshops.
“Every day something changes in me,” says shy 16-year-old, Shehab: “My knowledge is increasing, and I'm keeping something to help others.”
Nepal
Save the Children and its local partner, Sabal Nepal, formed the first girls' cricket team to combat child marriage.
Ria* not only started playing cricket but also became the chairperson of her Child Club: a group of young campaigners set up by Save the Children.
These efforts changed her parents' views and those of the community.
They have now declared their ward as child marriage free.
All countries should act now to decrease these risk factors for fragility and abuses of girls’ rights like child marriage.
Governments, donors, the UN, humanitarian agencies and NGOs must recognise fragility as a critical risk factor for girls and build new, fully-funded coalitions to tackle it.
Efforts to address risk factors for fragility and its consequences must ultimately enable governments to take full responsibility for ensuring the rights of all people within their country, especially the girls most at risk.
Through meaningful participation in decision-making; mobilising families and communities as allies for gender equality; providing improved and inclusive gender-responsive access to services; conducting research and budget analysis to inform technical guidance on good practice programming, laws and policies; and advocating to ensure governments and other decision-makers are accountable to girls.
You can read the report here: Global Girlhood Report 2024: Fragile Future
In fragile countries, girls face an increased risk of child marriage due to being out of school, unintended pregnancy or gender-based violence.
What is a fragile country?
A country can become fragile when it's affected by crises like wars and climate disasters.
Systems that are supposed to protect people like law enforcement and healthcare are weakened, leaving girls more vulnerable to poverty, violence, and child marriage. Governments in fragile countries face the dual challenge of needing to do more to protect girl’s rights, at a time when they are least able to deliver that support .
Page last updated July 2024
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