Programme

Programme

Harmful practices

Child marriage and female genital mutilation are internationally recognized human rights violations

A girl, 5, stands in her home in Aroma Village, near the city of Kassala.
UNICEF/UNI73765/Holt

The challenge

Harmful cultural practices, such as child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM), are discriminatory practices committed regularly over such long periods of time that communities and societies begin to consider them acceptable.

Around the world, hundreds of millions of girls and boys have experienced some form of violence, exploitation or harmful practice, although girls are at much greater risk. Child marriage and FGM span continents and cultures, yet in every society in which they are practiced, they reflect values that hold girls in low esteem and deprive them of the agency to chart their own course in life.

Some 650 million girls and women around the world today have been married as children, and over 200 million girls and women in more than 30 countries have undergone FGM.

A young woman, against a blue background, looks off-camera.
UNICEF/UNI77854/Holt
Asiya Abdu, 22, waits to be examined by a health worker in the Worer Health Centre, Ethiopia. Asiya, who was subjected to FGM as a child, is now pregnant with her fifth child.

FGM can lead to serious health complications – including prolonged bleeding, infection and infertility – or even death. Girls who have undergone FGM are at heightened risk of experiencing complications during childbirth. It is estimated that FGM causes an additional one to two perinatal deaths per 100 deliveries.

In some societies, FGM goes hand in hand with child marriage. Girls marred as children are more likely to drop out of school and become pregnant as teenagers – when they face increased risks of dying during pregnancy or childbirth, compared to women in their twenties. Infants born to teenage mothers are also more likely to be stillborn or die in the first month of life.

Wherever they occur, harmful practices rob girls of their childhood, deny them the chance to determine their own future and threaten the well-being of individuals, families and societies.

The solution

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for the elimination of all harmful practices, including FGM and child marriage. This recognition builds social and political will to end these practices and advance the rights of women and girls globally.

UNICEF seeks to ensure that every child is protected from violence and exploitation, including harmful practices, in both humanitarian and development settings. To that end, UNICEF works across the globe to:

  • Increase global knowledge of the problem and political commitment to end child marriage and FGM
  • Develop and support implementation of appropriate laws and policies
  • Support community-level transformation of social norms and practices
  • Empower women and girls to express and exercise their rights
  • Increase access to quality prevention, protection and care services
  • Increase government ownership over relevant programmes and efforts
  • Strengthen data collection and analysis

UNICEF’s Strategic Plan 2018–2021 reiterates our commitment to work for the elimination of child marriage and FGM. Recently, UNICEF scaled up action to combat both harmful practices, co-leading, together with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on Eliminating Female Genital Mutilation: Accelerating Change and the UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to Accelerate Action to End Child Marriage.

 

 

From 2014 to 2017, UNICEF interventions contributed to reaching 11.6 million people in 66 countries with child marriage messaging through community-based behavioural change programmes. During the same period, 24.5 million people in nearly 9,000 communities made public pledges to abandon FGM.

 

 

Madhalsi Sarkar, 17
UNICEF/UNI112032/Slezic
When Madhalsi Sarkar was 17 years old, her parents tried to marry her to a 27-year-old man. Madhalsi’s parents were not aware of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, which criminalizes child marriage in India.

Resources

Latest Trends and Future Prospects: This data brochure showcases global progress preventing child marriage in the last decade. While the global reduction in child marriage is to be celebrated, no region is on track to meet the SDG target of eliminating this harmful practice by 2030.

Calling for the End of the Medicalization of Female Genital Mutilation: This brief describes the medicalization of FGM, in which the procedure is carried out by a health care provider, whether in a clinic or elsewhere. No matter where or by whom it is performed, FGM is never safe.