Photograph by Mark Tuschman

Landscape Analysis of Early Marriage in India

Executive Summary
Nirantar Trust and Sadbhavana Trust
Supported by American Jewish World Service
May 2014

Dear Reader:
Throughout human history and across many cultures and religious traditions, child or early marriage has
been part of the social fabric of communities, including those in the United States. In fact, early marriage is
not relegated to the past. Each year, across the globe, 10 million girls below the age of 18 become brides.
This practice is most prevalent now in developing countries. It is crucial to remember that many parents in
the developing world seek early marriages for their daughters out of a desire to do right by their children.
Despite these good intentions, getting married at a young age has a devastating impact on girls around the
world. Girls who marry early are more likely to drop out of school, face limited employment prospects, live in
poverty and experience domestic violence. In addition to experiencing these grave human rights violations,
these same girls are also more likely to die in childbirth; currently, pregnancy is the leading cause of death
worldwide for girls ages 15 to 19. India, the subject of this report, has one of the highest rates of early
marriage in the world: 58 percent of women in the country get married before age 18.
American Jewish World Service (AJWS) has been supporting community organizations across India
that are committed to empowering girls and helping them resist early marriage and determine their
own futures. With more than 15 years of experience and $11 million invested to-date in supporting grassroots
organizations in India, AJWS is now undertaking a new initiative to support local Indian groups committed to
ending the practice of marrying off girls (and boys) before they have the knowledge, options and support to
make this crucial decision for themselves. This new initiative is made possible by the generous support of the
Kendeda Fund.
The question before us as supporters of girls and women worldwide is simple: How can we best
support Indian organizations to end child marriage and expand future possibilities for girls throughout
the country?
But the challenge remains complex. Child marriage persists in India, despite local attempts to abolish the
practice over the last 140 years. To better understand this complexity and guide our investments and those
of other funders, AJWS sought the expertise of Nirantar, a leading feminist Indian research organization that
focuses on education policy and education as a strategy to empower women. Based in New Delhi, Nirantar
strengthens communities abilities to respond to complex challenges, including gender-based violence and
poverty.
With AJWSs support, Nirantar has produced the attached report: Landscape Analysis of Early
Marriage in India. In this publication, we share the results of an intensive investigation of the root causes
of child marriage in India and strategies that may prove effective in ending it. Our hope is that this report
will provide insights and evidence from the field, which other funders, NGOs, coalition partners and
policymakers can use to shape discourse, make philanthropic investments, and build programs focused on
empowering girls and ending early marriage.
continues

The way forward will not be easy. Indian organizations that work on the issue of child marriage have faced
serious challenges, including threats to their safety. Many deeply rooted social and economic factors
encourage Indian families to view child marriage as a positiveor, at least, a tenableoption for their
daughters.
AJWS believes that we can create lasting and meaningful change by supporting the work of community
organizations in India and Indian experts on child marriage. These organizations and leaders know their
communities better than anyone and are well-positioned to develop and execute effective initiatives that can
strengthen the opportunities for girls and women in their country.
We believe every girl has a right to make choices about her future. We believe every girl can make
significant contributions to her family, community and societybut every girl needs support and
opportunities to make that happen.
From international donors to grassroots organizations, all can play a role in creating a world in which girls are
raised with the expectation that they will make decisions for themselves, including if and when to get married
and to whom. It is my pleasure to share this report, which contributes to the critical work that many others
are doing to create that change.
Sincerely,

Ruth W. Messinger
President

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Overview..........................................................................................4
Background.......................................................................................4
Methodology.................................................................................... 5
Findings............................................................................................ 6
I. The Root Causes of Early Marriage....................................................... 6
II. Related Issues Contributing to Early Marriage................................ 6
III. The Impact of Early Marriage....................................................................7
IV. Current Approaches to End Early Marriage........................................7
V. Gaps in Interventions to End Early Marriage.................................... 8
VI. Graph: The Landscape of Interventions............................................ 10
Recommendations...........................................................................12
Conclusion ......................................................................................12

OVERVIEW
This document is the executive summary of a full-length
report (which is currently in development) that provides
an analytic overview of the landscape of early marriage
(known in some settings as child marriage) in India,
conducted in 2014 by Nirantar Trust and Sadbhavana Trust,
with the support of American Jewish World Service (AJWS).
Nirantar and Sadbhavana Trust conducted a thorough
survey of the important work that has been done on this
issue to date, mapping the substantial investment over
many years made by international funders, NGOs and civil
society organizations in India to implement strategies to
end the practice.
The researchers also took a critical look at these
interventions and assessed both their strengths and
limitationsidentifying needs and opportunities for
modified or additional investment.
Importantly, this landscape analysis approaches this
issue from a feminist perspective, focusing on the way
sociocultural norms about gender and sexuality shape
the incidence and impact of the practice. It also assesses
interventions on the basis of whether they can successfully
empower girls to achieve greater choice in the decisions
that shape their futures.
This publication and the complete report aim to provide
funders, NGOs, coalition partners and policymakers with
insights and evidence from the field that they can use
to shape discourse, make philanthropic investments and
build programs focused on empowering girls and ending
early marriage. With this roadmapand with increased
commitment in India and around the worldwe believe
that we can make a profound difference in this field.

Research Questions
Through the mapping exercise, the Nirantar research team
addressed the following questions:
How is the phenomenon of early marriage best
understood? What is the best thinking on its root
causes?
What are the most promising current interventions?
Have current actors made progress on the issue, and if
so, using which approaches?

What are the shortcomings in these approaches?

What are the most strategic opportunities for effecting
change in which funders should invest resources?

BACKGROUND
Child and early marriage has been a prevalent practice at
different points in the history of almost all societies around
the globe, including Europe, the United States and the
Middle East. In India, the practice has origins going back to
ancient times and persists today.
For more than 140 years, the Indian government and civil
society have sought to curb the practice of child marriage
through law. In 2006, the government renewed its efforts:
India passed the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, which
increased the penalties for conducting a child marriage
ceremony, made a child marriage voidable by a married
party up to two years after reaching the age of maturity,
and provided the opportunity for courts to intervene
in these cases. Furthermore, in response to the widely
publicized rape case that happened in Delhi in 2012, the
Indian government increased the age of consent for sex to
match the age of marriage at 18 in 2013.
These legal frameworks reflect the governments and
communities concern about the issuebut they are rarely
implemented and have been insufficient in addressing an
issue as complex and rooted in community practice as
early marriage.
According to the most recent national survey
commissioned by Indias Ministry of Health and Family
Welfare, 58 percent of girls marry before reaching the legal
age of 18; and 74 percent are married before reaching 20.
The Indian government commissioned this research via the
National Family Health Survey, which tracks health-related
data trends throughout India over time.
Although the data reveal the widespread nature of this
issue, there is some reason for optimism, as it also shows
the incidence of extreme early marriage is dropping. Today,
only 12 percent of Indian women who married before age
20 were under 15 at the time of marriage. There has been a
gradual decline since the early nineties in the proportion of
women married by the ages of 15, 18, and 20 years.

These changes have influenced our terminology. The

documented increase in the average age of marriage
indicates that today this practice primarily affects
adolescents and young people, whose needs are different
from those of children. The term early marriage reflects
these complexities, and it is therefore the term the
Nirantar and Sadbhavana Trust team would prefer to use
rather than child marriage.
The contemporary practice of early marriage in India
is rooted in rigid societal norms and serves to bolster
longstanding social inequalities and power structures.
Marriage at a young age prevents both girls and boys from
exercising agency in making important life decisions and
securing basic freedoms, including pursuing opportunities
for education, earning a sustainable livelihood and
accessing sexual health and rights, among others. More
broadly, early marriage reinforces existing inequalities
between men and women and among different economic
classes, castes, and religious and ethnic groups.
To fully understand the causes of early marriage and create
solutions requires an in-depth understanding of issues of
gender, education, sexuality, livelihood and culture. Each
of the factors connected to early marriage cannot be
understood in isolation. We must examine the various ways
that they intersect and influence one another, and consider
how they are further complicated by connections with
socio-economic factors related to caste, religion, poverty,
migration and globalization.

METHODOLOGY
This study included four components:
Nirantar conducted a review of the existing literature
on early marriage, including key studies, academic
articles, reports and policy documents.
Nirantar carried out interviews with experts who
have done extensive work on the issue of early
and child marriage, including academics, activists,
funders, researchers, and government officials. The
input of these informants provided an intellectual
and theoretical base for this study and an overview
of existing laws and government strategies and the
shortcomings therein.

Nirantar collected primary data for this study from

field visits to 19 organizations working on issues
relevant to early marriage across seven states in
India: Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal,
Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and New Delhi. These
field visits included semi-structured individual and
group interviews and focus-group discussions with
adolescent girls and boys, womens collectives, mens
groups, fathers, and other community members such
as teachers, police and government officials, religious
leaders and the leadership of local panchayats (elected
village governments). Nirantar also conducted an
extensive focus group discussion with the staff of
all 19 organizations, in order to benefit from their
understanding of the issues on the ground and their
tactics for addressing early marriage.
Nirantar organized a two-day national consultation in
December 2013 with 42 people, including leaders from
38 organizations across the country. Topics included
root causes of child marriage, strategies for addressing
the issue, gaps in knowledge about the issue, and
challenges, funding and future directions.

About the Researchers

Nirantar is a center for gender and education founded
in 1993 to enable girls and women from marginalized
communities in India to have greater access to educational
opportunities as a key to their empowerment. Nirantar
works to increase the capacity of a wide range of
peopleincluding community leaders, teachers and staff
members in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and
government programsto create educational materials
and undertake research and advocacy on issues that
negatively affect human rights. For the past seven years,
Nirantar has worked with community organizations to
strengthen their work with adolescents and women, and
on issues of gender-based violence and sexuality.
Sadbhavana Trust has over 20 years of experience of
working on issues of gender, education, livelihoods and
culture at the grassroots, national and state levels. The
organizations recent focus has been on advocating for the
right to work for marginalized women in the state of Uttar
Pradesh. Sadbhavana Trust has extensive experience of
carrying out participatory, multi-method research with a
strong focus on making recommendations for change.

FINDINGS
I. The Root Causes of Early Marriage
The data collected in the landscape analysis demonstrated
that the root causes of early marriage are many and complex:

Economic Insecurity and Anxiety for the Future

The data indicated that marriage is a way for families in
India to ensure a degree of security from poverty, hunger
and sexual violence for their daughters. For instance, the
research showed that rural communities that experienced
frequent floods or droughts often had a higher incidence of
early marriage, indicating that families sought marriage as
a way to protect girls from poverty. In a region where many
people have been displaced by inter-religious violence and
live in refugee camps, the researchers found that many
families had married their daughters off early to protect
them from the threat of sexual violence and the insecurity
of living in the poor conditions of the camps. There were
similar reports among migrant families who have left their
villages in search of jobs in other countries: they often
arrange marriages for their daughters before leaving, as a
way to manage their concerns about their ability to feed
and protect the girls in the urban slums where they are
likely to be living. In contexts like these, marriage is often
the only socially sanctioned and accessible way for families
to provide security for their daughters.

Labor
Many Indian families depend on the labor of women and
girls to tend their fields or cattle and ensure the running of
their householdsand they bring this workforce into their
families through marriage. The household labor of young
brides often includes caring for the elderly and the young,
and tending the field that a family owns. Young brides are
often made to take on the responsibilities of older women
in the house, who then seek wage labor outside the home.
This practice further creates incentives for families to seek
young brides for their sons, in order to free up older family
members for jobs that can earn an income.

Honor and Control

In many Indian communities, family and community honor
are linked to the chastity of young girls. Families seek early
marriages for their daughters because they fear that they

will become victims of molestation or rapeeither inside

or outside the homeor will become pregnant outside
of wedlock. Many families view early marriage as a way
to reduce opportunities for young people to explore their
sexuality in a way that is socially unacceptable, or that their
families and communities see as risky.
Additionally, Indian society views a familys patriarch
as the protector of his daughters honor. If a young girl
is perceived as promiscuous, the community questions
the fathers dominion over his home. He may be made
an outcast or considered incompetent if he is unable to
control his daughters sexuality. This encourages families
to use marriage to ensure that daughters comply with
societal expectations of chastity. This belief also compels
fathers to marry their sons early, to ensure their sons
continued dependence on them as these young men raise
their own families.

II. Related Issues Contributing to Early Marriage

Early marriage is tied to a multitude of other larger social
issues. These factors have very real implications for local
communities, and lead them to exert pressures on young
people that can, in turn, lead to early marriage:

Trafficking
Some child brides are the victims of sex trafficking. In poor
communities, parents sometimes sell their daughters to
agents who use them for sex work or domestic labor.
Other families arrange marriages for their daughters to
wealthier men in states where there is a dearth of girls of
marriageable age due to high rates of female infanticide.
In other cases, parents use anti-trafficking laws to prevent
their daughters from marrying a person of their choice
or to accuse the boy she chose of having abducted her
forcibly. In these situations, the law eclipses the girls own
agency.

Media and Technology

With the increased access to technology such as television,
cell phones and internet in some urban locations, young
people and their families and communities are exposed to
many new sources of information and cultural influence.
Technology has the potential to increase young peoples
exposure to sexuality and to opportunities for meeting
romantic partners. Cell phones, the internet and social
media have also given youth access to social networks

that are often beyond their parents control. Television

and the media sell a notion of romance and love that is
antithetical to traditional Indian values, and encourage
youth to make choices for themselves. In response to these
new pressures, parents seek to enter their children into
wedlock before they might be compelled to make their
own decisions about love and marriage.

Changing Economy
In recent years, Indias economy has shifted away from
agro-industry to an increased focus on technology and new
industries. Since most Indian women who work labor in the
agricultural sector, this change has reduced opportunities
for women to earn a sustainable livelihood and contributed
to the increased poverty of rural communities. This dearth
of options for womens work has fueled the idea that girls
are a financial burden, leading many families to marry their
girls off early. It also compromises young womens ability
to establish their economic independence and makes them
less capable of asserting their own desires and resisting
early marriage.

III. The Impact of Early Marriage

Early marriage generates a number of negative
consequences for young brides and their families:

Education and Jobs

Early marriage limits a young couples educational and
economic opportunities. Young girls are often stigmatized
by their peers if they marry young, which causes many
brides to drop out of school. The pressure to prove their
fertility within the first few years of marriage generally
results in early pregnancy, making it even less likely that
they will continue their education. And when boys take
on the added responsibility of a wife and children, they
are forced to abandon their education in favor of unskilled
labor, thus extending debilitating cycles of poverty and
socioeconomic inequality.

Maternal and Child Health

Early pregnancy often leads to poor maternal and child
health, as girls bodies are still growing and not able to
withstand the stress of pregnancy and birth. In India, in
particular, young brides are often malnourished, because they
are the lowest priority in many families when it comes to food

and nutrition. This can lead to complications in pregnancy and

babies with low birth weights. Additionally, many young brides
do not have access to pre- or post-natal care or information
about staying healthy during and after a pregnancy.
The burden that is put on a young wedded girl to serve
her husband and his family causes a lot of stress and
conflict. Many organizations that the Nirantar team visited
mentioned that this causes psychological distress. As there
is very little documentation of the mental health impact
of early/child marriage, this phenomenon needs to be
investigated further.

Sexuality and Family Planning

In traditional communities, many girls enter marriage
with little knowledge about sex and have little to no
control over family planning. They experience considerable
pressure to get pregnant early, and are often not given
access to contraception. Furthermore, many young brides
do not have the agency to negotiate when or whether to
have sex in their own marriages. They are often forced to
have sex or get pregnant against their will.

IV. Current Approaches to End Early Marriage

To understand existing efforts to end the practice of
early marriage, the researchers asked each of the 19
organizations they studied to articulate its theory of
changethat is, its view of the problem and its approach
to addressing it in the long term. This question revealed
a broad landscape of strategies described below. As
most organizations work at the local level and provide
comprehensive support to girls and communities, many
employ more than one of these strategies to address this
issue:

Youth Centric Approach

Some organizations have a youth-centric approach. They
focus their attention on empowerment, striving to enhance
young peoples ability to choose if, when and whom to
marryand to consider alternatives to early marriage by
providing them with skills, knowledge and/or support.
These organizations seek to give agency and decisionmaking power to the young person.

Child Rights Approach

Other organizations address early marriage as a child rights
issue, focusing on protecting children from the harms
of early marriage. These organizations seek to prevent
marriage before the legal age of 18, regardless of the
wishes of the child or girl.

Safe Alternatives Approach

Many of the organizations that were surveyed work to
help young people find a safe place to stay if they want to
continue their education, resist early marriage or escape
domestic violence. Some states provide hostels for girls
who want to continue their education or work outside their
hometowns, but there are no shelters and crisis centers
(outside of the criminal justice system) for girls who have
been raped or for those who have run away to avoid being
married off. Organizations working on this issue often help
these girls find a place in an educational hostel so that they
can safely make alternate choices for their lives.

Community Dialogue Approach

Some organizations bring communities together through
collective processes to develop their own understanding of
the issues related to early marriage and to work to change
community norms that fuel it. Communities that work
in this way are not simply reacting to external pressures
(such as the law or development agencies solutions), but
are approaching the issue using tactics that are specific to
their own context, culture and understanding.

V. Gaps in Interventions to End Early Marriage

After closely examining the work of the dozens of
organizations doing important work to reduce the
incidence of early marriage in India, we have identified
gaps in their approaches that must be addressed if we
hope to end this practice in the long term. These gaps
indicate opportunities for further strategic engagement:

Prioritizing Realization of Human Rights

Of those organizations that treat early marriage as an issue
of young peoples rights and empowerment, often their
approach is limited to ensuring that young people simply
know what their rights are. Very few organizations address
how young people can access or realize their rights or give
young people the tools to advocate for change.
8

Looking Critically at the Inequalities

Embedded in the Existing Institution
of Marriage in India
Many approaches to ending early marriage focus on
preventing all marriage before the international legal
age of 18. These interventions seek to delay the age a girl
becomes a bride, but fail to examine the violations of her
rights that may occur regardless of the age she marries.
They often ignore those girls who have already gotten
married and who are currently living in marriages that they
did not choose.
In fact, the cultural practices of marriage in India are more
generally problematic, as they both reflect and maintain
existing social hierarchies, and perpetuate discrimination
on the basis of class, caste and religion. In individual
households, for example, social norms dictating that
the bride must be from an equal or lower caste, must
be equally or less educated, and be of the same age or
younger than the groom, help to maintain inequalities
between men and women. Social norms related to wives
work within the home, and that place the power over
all decisions related to sex and contraception with the
husband, limit womens rights. These inequalities manifest
themselves within individual households as well as in
society at large.
Nevertheless, few groups are employing interventions
that critique or seek to change the gender and sexual
norms that define marriage and gender relations in local
communities. As a result, most organizations end up
maintaining the social status quo, despite their concerns
about early marriage.

Giving Girls and Women Agency in

Choosing their Own Futures
When girls are forced to marry without having the agency
to decide whether, when, how and whom to marry, their
rights are undermined, no matter what their age. The
single-minded focus of most interventions on raising the
age of marriage without creating alternatives to marriage
or giving young people a choice about when, whom and
whether to marry, denies young people a choice in their
futures and simply propagates the inequalities inherent in
the institution of early marriage.
For those young people and their families who want to
resist early marriageor who want to resist marriage
entirelythere is an absence of institutions that provide

them with alternatives. For example, there are no safe

houses, educational institutions and (for girls) residential
schools and colleges, and few ways for young people to
assert their adulthood outside of marriage. In the absence
of these support systems, young people who want to resist
marriage are either compelled to give in to the pressures
of society, or are forced to run away, severing all ties with
their families. Due to this lack of alternatives, young people
may believe that marriage is a necessary eventuality,
and a good marriage is the ultimate desirable option for
adulthood. Young people may therefore choose to get
married at a young age, in order to start their adult lives
earlier, and avail themselves of what they perceive as the
legitimacy that arises from marriage.
There is a lack of understanding in communities of the
multiple negative effects of early marriage on young people,
and a lack of programs that attempt to enable young people
to negotiate these problems or circumvent them by being
able to decide when, and whether, to get married.

Providing Education about Sexuality,

Marriage and Alternatives
Few programs surveyed offered resources to empower
young people to make informed choices about marriage and
sexuality. Although sexuality is at the core of early marriage,
there is silence around it, particularly relating to young
peoples own sexual desires. Some early marriages are not
forced, but chosen by young people who feel they have no
other socially acceptable outlet for sexual desireor who
do not believe that they have options other than marriage.
Young people in many Indian communities have no one

to talk to about sex or marriageor how to deal with the

emotional, physical or mental impacts of marriage itself.

Changing Attitudes about Masculinity

Few interventions work with men or help society
change damaging expectations of masculinity. Only one
organization had an intervention to engage with men, and
it focuses on asking young men to pledge to delay their
own marriages. It would be beneficial to foster a deeper
understanding of how the patriarchal system affects
masculinity and how deeper attitudinal change about
masculinity among all genders is important to address the
issue of early marriage.

Engaging with India as a Changing Society

As the global economy transforms India, and as global
cultural forces affect Indian society, social norms are
changingnot only among adolescents, but among people
of all age groups. Young people experience changes in
social norms among their peers. They also experience their
families reactions to transformations in society as a whole.
For instance, the availability of cell phones has altered young
peoples access to information, including information about
sexuality. It has also expanded opportunities for both girls
and boys to choose their own partners, thereby increasing
familial pressure to marry early. To talk about early marriage
without engaging with the complex issues of a changing
society and the ways in which young people cope with
and participate in it would not lead to lasting, sustainable
attitudinal change vis--vis early marriage.

VI. Graph: The Landscape of Interventions

The following table provides an overview of the interventions being implemented by the 19 organizations surveyed for
this report, identifying promising elements of these interventions and gaps and limitations in their approach.

Promising Elements of Interventions

Limitations of Interventions

LIVELIHOOD

SEXUAL REPRODUCTIVE
HEALTH AND RIGHTS
(SRHR)

EDUCATION

Organizations are creating alternate spaces for

This intervention does not address the gender
and sexual norms that are contributing causes of
adolescents who cannot access mainstream
education. These educational opportunities
early marriage.
often include information about gender, sexuality
and sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Organizations report that these interventions
often successfully delay marriage by a few years.
Education is used to provide non- gendered
activities for girls.

Providing creative space to talk about gender,

sexuality and health issues.
Working with newly married women on issues of
reproductive health and nutrition.

This intense focus on maternal health neglects

young peoples sexuality, sexual health and
information about choices with regards to
these issues.

Linking skill-building with issues of gender

and sexuality.

The options provided for earning livelihoods

conform to rigid gender roles.

Increasing girls negotiation power to

pursue livelihood options (even for young
married women).

Self-help group options are not accessible to

young people; only to women of certain ages.

Running micro-finance and savings programs.

10

The education system, the curricula and the

teachers all reinforce gendered norms of the
obedient good girl and good boy, each of whom
is uninterested in sex, respects their elders and
does not question authority. Many of the NGOs
working on education also fall into this way of
thinking, and thus limit the choices that boys and
girls are offered. Young people are therefore not
encouraged to develop critical thinking skills, to
question authority figures or their own options,
or to assert themselves, and are not taught about
sexuality or about livelihood options beyond those
which are socially sanctioned.

LAW AND GOVERNANCE

Promising Elements of Interventions

Strengthening the current law to prevent
early marriage and making the judicial system
accountable for enforcing it. (The current law
provides financial incentives to families who
delay marriage until age 18 and allow their
daughters to remain in school.)

Interventions that focus on the law rather than

empowering the community to bring about
change from within often create fear, because
families who violate the law and marry their
daughters early worry about imprisonment
and stigma.
Legal interventions intended to delay marriage do
not actively foster any options outside of marriage
as alternatives, leaving families with the same
concerns about honor and security.
Legal interventions dont address the larger gender
inequalities and social norms that contribute to
this problem in the first place. In this case, the law
is just a band-aid for a larger problem.

Creating safe spaces for adolescents to exercise

their right to choose when, whether and whom
they would like to marry.
VIOLENCE

Limitations of Interventions

The police and other government mechanisms

often provide counseling and other options that
perpetuate patriarchal values, in which the law is
used to threaten the family or the girl.

Providing legal support in cases of domestic

violence.

ANTI-TRAFFICKING

MEDIA

Providing counseling and therapy to survivors of

sexual violence.
Using street theater to educate youth, families
and the greater community about the impact of
early marriage.

These performances often unintentionally

reinforce existing gender norms associated with
marriage and early marriage. Although they urge
communities to raise the age of marriage, they
rarely ask people to question social norms that
perpetuate the practice of early marriage.

Creating anti-trafficking vigilance committees

at the village level, including community and
members of the local panchayats.

These interventions were implemented with a

limited approach to and understanding of child
marriage and trafficking.
These efforts also blur the line between cases
where a girl has been genuinely trafficked and
those cases where a girl has eloped and her family
uses trafficking laws to accuse the young man
of being a trafficker or kidnapper, and void the
marriage.

11

RECOMMENDATIONS

CONCLUSION

Based on the extensive research conducted in

the landscape analysis, we make the following
recommendations for funding agencies and organizations
to effectively and sustainably address the issue of child
marriage in India:

Today, there is a growing international interest in the

issue of early marriage. As communities, governments
and funders seek to shape interventions to address this
practice, we hope that the findings of this report will
inform their thinking.

Focus on empowering young people. Reducing early

marriage is only one step in realizing this goal.
Provide young people with spaces where they can
access guidance and counseling on their choices
and aspirations, so that their own desires are at the
center of the agenda. Young people should have the
knowledge, skills and support to articulate their goals,
including decisions related to marriage.
Empower young people themselves to be critical
partners in the work to stop early marriage.
Ensure that root causes (e.g., rigid gender roles, control
of sexuality, etc.) are addressed in interventions to end
early marriage.
Engage in research on the shortcomings of existing
interventions, and build the capacities of organizations
to grapple with them.
Acknowledge the central role that addressing the issue
of early marriage can play in bringing about broader
social change, particularly in empowering women and
young people to engage in social change efforts.
Reevaluate monitoring and evaluation techniques to
measure and assess not only important behavioral
outcomes, but the changes in values and attitudes
taking place within communities. In this way funding
agencies can empower organizations to better address
the root causes of early marriage.

12

Early marriage in India is symptomatic of multiple,

interconnected root causes and structural inequalities.
Effective, sustainable solutions to this complex problem
must engage with all of the multiple factors that perpetuate
the practice. Interventions must also empower young people
to critique the social norms inherent to marriage in their
culture and participate in advocating for a collective process
of change within their broader communities.
This practice has existed for millenniabut the power to
stop it is in our hands. We hope that all who are concerned
will join in building thoughtful, nuanced and empowering
solutions to early marriage in Indiaand around the world.

NOTES:

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