Every year, 12 million girls are married before the age of 18, and these girls are often denied their right to quality education.

To tackle this issue, Girls Not Brides UK, together with La Coalition Nationale Contre le Mariage des Enfants au Burkina Faso (CONAMEB) and Plateforme vers la fin du mariage des enfants au Niger has launched this project, which addresses the interlinked problems of child marriage and girls’ lack of access to quality education. The project is focused on countries in West Africa, which has some of the highest rates for child marriages and out-of-school girls.

The efforts of the project can be divided in national, regional, and international interventions:

• Nationally the project will strengthen coordination, advocacy, and policy dialogue between end child marriage (ECM) coalitions, national education coalitions and other development partners in Burkina Faso and Niger. 
  • Thus, CSOs working on girls' education and ending child marriage in Burkina Faso and Niger will strengthen their institutional, technical and advocacy capacities, and carry out more effective joint advocacy to promote inclusive, gender responsive and equitable national education policies and systems to end child marriage.
• Regionally in Francophone West Africa, ECM and education coalitions will strengthen alliances for continued peer-to-peer learning, information sharing and collective evidence-based advocacy to promote girls’ education and ECM.
  • This will result in the generation of evidence and shared learning on practices to improve access to quality education for girls at risk of child marriage and married girls in Francophone West Africa.
  • ECM and education coalitions in the region will be supported in transnational advocacy initiatives and campaigns that influence national education and child marriage advocacy efforts.
• Internationally the national and regional learning on effective programmatic and advocacy approaches to promote girls' education and ECM will contribute to a global learning agenda.
  • This will increase knowledge and understanding on effective strategies for joint advocacy on girls’ education and ending child marriage across ECM and education coalitions at an international level.

The project is building on a previous phase, implemented between February 2021 – December 2023 . Thus, the organisations will continue to work closely with other ECM and education coalitions in the region, such as those in Benin, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo, building on the relationships formed and work carried out in the previous phase of the project.

Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Mariage. Created in 2011, Girls Not Brides is a global network of more than 1,600 civil society organisations from over 100 countries committed to ending child marriage and ensuring that girls can reach their full potential. Girls Not Brides has member organisations based across Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East, all working to end child marriage and making sure all girls around the world can stay in school, stay healthy and have the futures they dream of. Together with their partners, Girls Not Brides work for a world without child marriage where girls and women enjoy equal status with boys and men and are able to achieve their full potential in all aspects of their lives.

La Coalition Nationale Contre le Mariage des Enfants au Burkina Faso (CONAMEB). Created in 2013, CONAMEB is a coalition of national and international associations and NGOs working to end child marriage in Burkina Faso. It currently has 76 member organisations across the country’s 13 regions. The Coalition defends and promotes girls’ rights through awareness raising, and policy and advocacy activities to end child marriage. CONAMEB became part of the Girls Not Brides Partnership in May 2019.

Plateforme vers la fin du mariage des enfants au Niger. The Platform to end child marriage in Niger was created in 2017. It is a strategic inter-partner coalition whose objective is to coordinate advocacy efforts to ECM in Niger. Currently, the Platform has 60 members including three UN Agencies, six international organisations, nine national NGOs, seven girls' organisations, two girl leaders’ organisations, and 33 women's federations. Girls Not Brides have been working closely with the platform since 2017.

A previous phase of the project was implemented between February 2021 – December 2023 . The current project is part of the EOL extension phase of 2024-2026. Read more about the first phase of the project here.