Action by Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies to prevent and respond to child marriage: case study report

This report provides examples of projects and lessons learnt from the work of Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies to address child marriage across both development and humanitarian contexts in several continents.

Some of their lessons learnt include the need to:

• Help girls access basic essential services such as psychosocial support and other health care services.


• Provide multiple interventions as single activities are not effective.


• Involve parents and community leaders so that the responsibility of addressing child marriage is on adults and not on children.


• Work to support participation and leadership of adolescents and young adults.


• Foster collaboration between local, international NGOs, UN agencies, and local government.


• Try to monitor reach and results of programmatic activities on child marriage.


• Find solutions to challenges related to reaching adolescents in fragile, hard-to-reach or conflict-affected areas.


• Using IFRC's network of 190 national societies and 14 million local volunteers, their fundamental principles of impartiality, neutrality and independence, and their technical and operational expertise on complex humanitarian issues, as valuable entry points to address child marriage.