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Welcome to the archives of News Deeply’s Women & Girls Hub. While we paused regular publication of the site on January 22, 2018, and transitioned our coverage to Women’s Advancement Deeply, we are happy to serve as an ongoing public resource on the Arctic. We hope you’ll enjoy the reporting and analysis that was produced by our dedicated community of editors contributors.
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In rural southern Kenya, it can be difficult to reach girls at risk of experiencing genital cutting and forced marriage, but a gender officer in local government has set up a WhatsApp group to help the community intervene to protect their children.
Illustrator Kate Lumsden and journalist Gethin Chamberlain tell the story of Rute Fumulani, forced to marry at 14 after losing her parents to catastrophic flooding. She is one of many girls forced to marry due to the effects of climate change.
When they get their periods, many girls in Zimbabwe skip school or drop out; others resort to exchanging sex for sanitary pads. The government and NGOs hope that giving girls free or affordable pads will stop puberty from derailing their education and childhoods.
Lakshmi Sundaram Executive Director, Girls Not Brides
Climate change makes already vulnerable girls even more so. As world leaders gather at the COP23 climate summit in Bonn this week, Lakshmi Sundaram of Girls Not Brides says child marriage must be on the agenda.
A new report provides the first comprehensive estimate of the extent of modern slavery worldwide. In most contexts, women and girls are especially vulnerable to exploitation.
As someone who was married as a child, Rawda al-Mazloum, a Syrian refugee in Lebanon, is working hard to prevent this from happening to girls in the refugee camp where she lives. Mazloum has experienced stigma for being divorced, and warns that young refugee divorcees are particularly vulnerable to abuse.
Two years ago, Uganda launched a national strategy to cut child marriage rates, but girls are still getting married too young. Now local groups are stepping in to try to tackle the problem with community-based initiatives.
When Malawi passed a law banning child marriage last year, activists applauded it as a significant first step in ending the practice. Now some local groups are using song, theater and dialogue to spread the message and change attitudes towards early marriage.
In a part of South Sudan where a girl’s worth is measured in how many cows her family can get for her dowry, one school is teaching girls how to stand up for their rights.
Josephine Kulea has saved over 1,000 girls in Kenya from forced marriage and the female genital mutilation that usually precedes it. Her work has earned praise from Barack Obama, but she says politicians back home won’t support her work in case it loses them votes.
In Nepal, many children enter into so-called love marriages to escape desperate situations at home. But while these are marriages of choice, activists warn the damage to girls’ prospects is as bad as if they had been forced to marry.
For young Mozambicans trying to avoid contracting HIV, it’s difficult to separate rumor from fact. The Coalizao youth center in Maputo gives out answers and advice via SMS, in the hope that education is the key to curbing the virus’ spread.
In a country where almost two in every five girls are married before they turn 18, activist Rebecca Gyumi was hoping only for clarity on the law when she petitioned the Tanzanian high court. Instead, she got a total ban and a victory for child rights.
Malala Yousafzai Gained Recognition in Her Home Country of Pakistan for Her Campaign for Children's Education and Criticism of the Taliban
Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai spent her 19th birthday at Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya to highlight the challenges girls face getting an education. In a blog post from the camp, she asks the world to join the fight to get more girls into school.
To mark World Population Day, we take a look at the young Syrian boys and girls in Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp who, like their peers in Lebanon, are on a mission to cut the number of early marriages rife among their friends. Pictures and text supplied by UNFPA.
Almost 23 percent of adolescent girls registered as Syrian refugees in Lebanon were married before they turned 18. With the help of UNFPA and aid organization INTERSOS, some young Syrian refugees are spreading the word about the dangers of marrying too young.
Adolescent girls in Bangladesh face severe threats to their health: Two-thirds marry by age 18, and a third of girls are mothers before age 20. A national network of teen girls called Shornokishoree aims to improve girls’ health through peer-to-peer advocacy.
When her family fled Syria, Muzoon Almellehan worried she would never get to finish her schooling. Now living in the U.K., and preparing for her final exams, she has become a campaigner for the right of all refugee children to go to school.
Despite half a century of efforts to reduce population growth, India faces challenges in delivering a family-planning program that goes beyond female sterilization to help couples delay and space out their children.
Mabel van Oranje is the chair of Girls Not Brides, a partnership of organizations around the globe dedicated to ending child marriage. She tells Women and Girls Hub why education is key to ending this harmful practice.
Women and girls are almost exclusively the target of programs to stop childhood weddings. Gender experts say change will only come if men and boys are also part of the conversation.
EngenderHealth’s chief executive officer, Ulla Müller, says that empowering women to recognize their right to family planning could save thousands of lives in poorer countries.
Malawi has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world. In 2012, a U.N. survey found that more than half of the country’s girls are married before the age of 18 and they are often treated as commodities, traded by parents driven by desperation or custom.
A new four-year study has found that programs that educate girls, teach them about their rights and build their career skills reduce child marriage by up to one third.
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