Improve girls’ wellbeing and asserts that girls should have a voice, choice, and agency when it comes to deciding about when and whom to marry.
Commitment description:The MTBA members, Save the Children Netherlands, Oxfam Novib, Simavi, Population Council and local partners bring together complementary knowledge, skills, and experience to implement and evaluate programmes to delay marriage in a variety of contexts. MTBA draws from a widespread network, including established country offices, memberships, and long-term collaboration with strong local partners to deliver meaningful engagement with girls and communities.
The MTBA approach works to improve girls’ wellbeing and asserts that girls should have a voice, choice, and agency when it comes to deciding about when and whom to marry. MTBA offers girls alternate pathways to marriage and childbearing as an essential component to empowering girls. We work to change communities and create these pathways by elevating the status of over 60,000 girls in more than 900 communities in India, Malawi, Mali, Niger and Pakistan. We know the power of adolescent girls and this is why we address child, early and forced marriage and commit to strive for:
(1)Developing and using actionable evidence to understand how context and culture influence child marriage and tailor and improve programmes on the ground;
(2)Seeking opportunities to scale up and reach more girls and working within existing structures to institutionalize effective approaches;
(3)Strengthen local leaders in Niger, Mali, Malawi Pakistan and India by provide innovative methods and tools, to be able to improve programmatic work on the ground.
(4)Raise priority in policy spaces for offering appropriate alternative pathways to child marriage, by utilizing key moments and put/keep this topic on the national, regional and global agendas;
(5)Share experiences and evidence from our programmes from local level to international level and bring international obligations, commitments, and evidence of countries from international spaces and mechanisms back to national and local level.
Mode of engagement:
- Programmatic actionThe More Than Brides Alliance (MTBA) consists of Save the Children NL, Oxfam Novib, Simavi and Population Council. With funding from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs this alliance is implementing the Programme ‘Marriage: No Child’s Play
Address gender-based violence and the harmful practices of child, early and forced marriages and female genital mutilation(5) (a) Zero sexual and gender-based violence and harmful practices, including zero child, early and forced marriage, as well as zero female genital mutilation; and (b) Elimination of all forms of discrimination against all women and girls, in order to realize all individuals’ full socio-economic potential.
