Developing Youth Groups in Bangladesh to Support Peers at Risk of Early Marriage

An estimated 650 million women alive today were married before reaching the age of 18. Research has shown that the practice has wide-ranging adverse consequences. Most countries have a legal minimum age of marriage with a range of punishments for individuals who facilitate, or enter into, a wedding with a minor. However, in low and middle-income countries, child marriage laws are frequently ignored and girls often face social pressures to marry from the onset of puberty. Adolescent girls living in low-income households in these countries, with limited access to education and economic opportunities, are particularly at high risk of being forced into early marriage.

The practice of female early marriage is highly prevalent among the poor and extreme poor and the evidence indicates that poverty and lack of education and employment opportunities are key drivers behind the practice. In the vast majority of instances, underage marriages in Bangladesh are arranged by parents. Thus, the focus on criminalisation is inadequate and ineffective to address the issue. Some ongoing interventions address the issue by focusing on non-legal alternatives, created through education and employment, and improved agency of adolescent girls to take advantage of expanding life choices. These include school-based as well as community-based interventions providing market opportunities and life skills-training. While literacy and numeracy (including awareness of legal rights) acquired at school or through clubbased interventions can expand basic capabilities, they do not guarantee freedom from genderbased violence if, for instance, youths remain isolated and unable to independently access legal resources/institutions. In the past, self-organised youth groups in Bangladesh have received wide media attention for their efforts and successes in blocking the early or forced marriage of their peers. But “wedding busting” activities alone are unlikely to change deeply entrenched early marriage norms.

In this context, the proposed research develops innovative technology-aided empowerment initiatives, with a focus on legal rights and remedies, in partnership with a community-based legal aid and advocacy NGO in Bangladesh that have the potential to expand human capabilities and develop new agencies among vulnerable youths. The project will lead to co-creation of a real-world intervention with built-in impact provisions. The impact evaluation design is experimental and the findings will be used for reforming existing policy and practice relating to adolescent empowerment.