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Covid-19 threatens global progress on girls’ rights
The world was making real progress toward ending child marriage, right up until the pandemic. Teen pregnancies were also declining, especially among girls under 15, until the pandemic.
The Covid-19 pandemic and inadequate response by governments have seriously harmed or threatened a generation of advances in girls’ rights. A new Save the Children report says the economic fallout from the pandemic will force 90 to 117 million more children into poverty, putting girls at greater risk of child marriage and teenage pregnancy than in the past 30 years. .
Save the Children found that half a million more girls are at risk of child marriage by the end of 2020 and 2.5 million by 2025 due to the pandemic. (That is in addition to the already 12 million girls estimated to be forced into marriage in 2020). The Covid-19 pandemic is a crisis like no other because it has led to an unprecedented near-worldwide closure of schools, affecting a staggering 800 million. Girls. An alarming number of these girls are at risk of being forced into marriage or becoming pregnant.
Human Rights Watch has been documenting the causes and consequences of child marriage for more than a decade, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Our research shows that child marriage and the resulting early pregnancies, both a consequence and a factor of lack of access to education, can increase dramatically in times of crisis. In a crisis, girls are often taken out of school, which should normally provide a safe space, so child marriage and early pregnancy are often the result. In many countries, girls who are married, pregnant, or already parents are actively discouraged, or even banned from continuing their studies altogether. This needs to change, now.
Governments must adopt comprehensive national strategies to combat child marriage, and reactivate them if they have them, and set the minimum age for marriage at 18 years without exceptions. National Covid-19 response plans should make preventing child marriage and ensuring that girls, married or not, have access to sexual and reproductive health services, including contraceptive supplies, key priorities. Schools and governments should monitor the gender breakdown of returning children, and when schools reopen, communicate and re-engage all missing children. Governments should demand that schools welcome and support girls who are married, pregnant and with children in school to help them keep their futures on track.
