Girls Not Brides

Girls Not Brides is a global partnership of more than 1,400 civil society organisations in nearly 100 countries, all committed to ending child marriage and supporting girls who are already married. It describes child marriage as a global problem driven by gender inequality, poverty, social norms and insecurity, with consequences that reach across health, education and economic life. The partnership frames its strength as its diversity: member organisations range from small community groups to large international bodies, and they work together rather than through a single central programme.

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A secretariat supports the partnership, holding the strategy, convening members and representing the movement in international spaces. Its stated approach combines global advocacy that keeps child marriage on international development agendas with sustained national action by governments and civil society. It also positions itself as a source of evidence and data for the wider movement, not only as a campaigning body.

Headquarters: London, England

Major Areas of Work

• Global action: Protecting and unlocking funding to end child marriage and keeping the issue a non-negotiable priority in international development agendas.

• Country impact: Driving sustained national action by governments and civil society in countries, contributing to a reduction in child marriage prevalence.

• Partnership building: Recruiting, connecting and supporting member civil society organisations, including national partnerships and coalitions that coordinate work within a country.

• Evidence and research: Gathering and publishing data on child marriage rates, trends, causes and what works to end it, so that advocates can argue from evidence.

• Learning and capacity support: Providing tools, resources and events for members working on advocacy, youth activism and fundraising.

Major Initiatives and Programmes

• Child Marriage Atlas: An interactive tool covering child marriage rates, trends and progress across regions, with detailed country profiles setting out both the scale of the problem and efforts to address it.

• The Child Marriage Research to Action Network (The CRANK): A research network that connects evidence on child marriage with the people running programmes and advocacy, so that findings reach practice.

• Resource centre: A searchable library of publications, toolkits and guidance for organisations working on child marriage and related issues.

• National Partnerships and Coalitions: Country-level groupings of member organisations that coordinate joint advocacy and programme work within a single national context.

• Member directory and membership: An open route for civil society organisations to join the partnership, and a public directory of the organisations already in it.

The partnership model is the core of how Girls Not Brides works. Rather than delivering programmes directly at scale, the secretariat builds the infrastructure that lets over 1,400 independent organisations act together: shared evidence, shared advocacy positions, national coalitions, and a collective voice in global forums such as the UN Human Rights Council.

Impact

Girls Not Brides states that its partnership comprises more than 1,400 civil society organisations across nearly 100 countries. Its own site cites that 12 million girls are married before the age of 18 each year, which it presents as 23 girls every minute, or around 1 girl every 3 seconds. It works alongside national governments, UN human rights bodies and its member organisations, and its country-level work runs through national partnerships and coalitions formed by those members.

Leadership

• Dr Faith Mwangi-Powell, Chief Executive Officer

Girls Not Brides suits people who want to operate at the level of a movement rather than a single project. The work spans global policy advocacy, research and data, membership support and country-level coalition building, so it gives exposure to how international development agendas are shaped and to how civil society organisations across nearly 100 countries actually coordinate. It fits people comfortable working through partners rather than directly, who can hold a long-term structural goal alongside slow, negotiated progress, and who want experience at the intersection of gender equality, child rights and global policy.