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ABSTRACT
Efforts to eliminate ‘child, early, and forced marriage’, human rights violations with a wide range of harmful consequences, have intensified in the past twenty years as part of a growing social movement toward gender equality. The compound phrase ‘child, early, and forced marriage’ has become the preferred rhetoric in recent years and communicates a range of potentially harmful aspects of marriage, including the timing and consensuality of the event. However, we argue that two of the three component terms in ‘child, early, and forced marriage’ are not uniformly understood and, as a result, have not been adequately taken up in research, policy, or programming. In this review, we describe the history of this term and how different institutions define its individual components. We demonstrate that, in practice, ‘child, early, and forced marriage’ is often simplified to child marriage alone because this concept has a shared definition that is readily quantifiable. We recommend that clear definitions of early and forced marriage be developed and consistently applied alongside child marriage to further progress toward the overarching aim of improving gender equality.
Author’s contributions
AK conceptualised this commentary. AK, MS, and MEG wrote the manuscript jointly and all authors contributed important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
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17 CEFM has occasionally been expanded in recent years to CEFMU to recognize that entering informal unions before the age of 18 conveys many of the same harms as becoming formally married. Discussion of the distinction between marriages and unions is beyond the scope of this commentary and we use CEFM for clarity throughout.
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Additional information
Notes on contributors
Alissa Koski
Alissa Koski is an Assistant Professor at McGill University in Montreal, where she studies how highly gendered behaviours, such as child marriage, affect population health.
Manahil Siddiqi
Manahil Siddiqi in a research scientist at UNICEF Innocenti — Global Office of Research and Foresight specializing in the generation and use of evidence to inform programs and policies to prevent harmful practices. Manahil is also a Clinical Instructor in the Department of Health Systems and Population Health at the University of Washington School of Public Health.
Margaret E. Greene
Dr. Margaret Greene heads up GreeneWorks consultancy where she conducts research and institutional advocacy at the intersections of gender equality, equitable masculinities, and health and wellbeing. She has collaborated most recently on creating a definitive database in four languages of studies on child marriage and has published extensively using this resource.