On March 4, the Women’s Initiative at Columbia SIPA’s Institute of Global Politics (IGP), together with the Center for Global Development (CGD), released a new report titled Accelerating Efforts to End Child Marriage. Every year, 12 million girls are married under 18. Globally, one in five girls face this fate. In many countries, marriage and sexual intercourse with girls under 18 – and in some cases as young as nine – carry no criminal penalty.
This report, commissioned by Secretary Hillary Clinton and Sheryl Sandberg, explains that “a girl forced into marriage doesn’t only lose her childhood. She loses years of education, economic opportunity, and autonomy. She will spend her life navigating consequences she never chose.” The report details the potential consequences to a girl’s life – health detriments, a lack of education, and intimate partner violence. Ending child marriage is not only a moral imperative, but an economic one requiring coordinated global action.
Child marriage has existed as a social issue in its own circles. However, leaders at the report’s launch explained that when an issue has intersectional consequences, a coordinated movement must be started to connect grassroots organizations, philanthropists, and most importantly, government efforts. The key insight is the global economic benefit of investing in these girls’ futures. The CGD’s new report estimates that inaction will lead to losses of almost $2.5 trillion by 2040, due to lost productivity and increased health risks caused by child marriage. The report calls on global powers and institutions to act through an economic analysis of current and potential losses, as well as the benefits of investment. The CGD’s data also projects that an annual investment of $1.3 billion could reduce international rates from one in five girls to one in seven.
The evidence is clear: if the world can coordinate strategic and intentional action through investment in girls’ education, expansion of health services to reduce adolescent pregnancy, and a shift of social norms that perpetuate child marriage, human rights violations can be significantly reduced, and life outcomes for millions of girls improved.
The report outlines the main causes of child marriage: poverty, social norms, regional instability, lack of healthcare access, and limited education and economic opportunity. These are often cited as reasons the issue is too complex to solve. Undeniably, child marriage as a social norm is repugnant and a reinforcer of traditional gender hierarchies. Regarding the remaining causes, the report directly addresses them by explaining that child marriage does not actually relieve poverty; it deepens it, and countries bear those economic losses for generations, further perpetuating these societal issues.
In 2024, Sierra Leone enacted the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act. The First Lady of Sierra Leone, Fatima Maada Bio, was promised as a child to a man she was raised to call her uncle. She escaped this fate but made it her life’s work to end this practice in her country and led the campaign Hands Off Our Girls. The new act criminalizes arranging, facilitating, or even attending a child’s marriage. Sierra Leone’s approach demonstrates how legal reform with enforcement and strong political leaders can create progress. A unified strategic effort is needed to outlaw child marriage everywhere. The evidence is strong that change will result in social benefits, economic benefits, and most importantly, safety for the world’s most vulnerable girls. Speakers at the report’s launch emphasized that leaders who permit legal sexual intercourse with girls as young as nine, or fail to criminalize sexual abuse, should be held accountable and not hold roles in global institutions. First Lady Bio calls this practice “pedophilia and legalized rape.” You should too.
Every year without action 12 million more girls will lose their education, their health, and their autonomy due to a practice the international community has long recognized as a human rights violation. Beyond its human and economic costs, child marriage contributes to long-term instability through continuing cycles of gender inequality and limited education that undermine state resilience. The IGP and CGD report makes clear that the tools to change this exist. The question is whether global leaders will use them.
The full report can be found here.
