From Sierra Leone to the United Nations, a New Push to End Child Marriage
The United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 4 adopted a landmark resolution creating an International Day for the Elimination of Child, Early and Forced Marriage, following a push led by Sierra Leone’s first lady and president of the Organization of African First Ladies for Development, Dr. Fatima Maada Bio.
The resolution designates Nov. 27 as the annual observance and calls on governments to develop national strategies to end child marriage, invest in girls’ education, and use the day for public education, advocacy and accountability.
For Sierra Leone, where three in 10 young women are married before 18, the resolution marks a significant moment for a country that has long grappled with high rates of child marriage and is now helping lead a global effort to end it.
“My greatest hope is that a girl born anywhere in Africa will grow up knowing that her future belongs to her—that she can remain in school, dream without limits, choose if and when to marry, and become whatever she is capable of becoming,” Dr. Bio told More to Her Story. “If this resolution helps us build an Africa where no girl’s potential is exchanged for a marriage before she is ready, then we will have transformed a resolution into a promise—and a promise into a new reality for generations of African girls.”
As a child, Dr. Bio’s father arranged for her to marry a man in his 30s. Amid Sierra Leone’s civil war, she fled the country and sought asylum in Britain, where she studied, became an actress and later met Julius Maada Bio, now Sierra Leone’s president. After he took office in 2018, Dr. Bio turned the role of first lady into a public platform, speaking out against issues such as period poverty, sex trafficking, and child marriage.
That effort culminated in 2024, when President Bio signed a law setting 18 as the minimum marriage age and making it a crime to marry a child or help arrange such a union. In June, four men in Sierra Leone were brought before a court over the forced marriage of a 17-year-old girl, marking an early test of the law’s reach, particularly in rural communities where traditional and religious norms remain powerful.
Payzee Mahmod is a women’s rights activist, survivor of child marriage, Girls Not Brides UK co-chair and More to Her Story Advisory Board member whose advocacy helped raise the legal age of marriage in England and Wales from 16 to 18. She sees the resolution as a watershed moment in the global fight to end child marriage.
“As someone who has lived through the consequences of child marriage, I know what it means for a girl to have her future decided for her before she’s had the chance to imagine one of her own,” Ms. Mahmod said. “That’s why Dr. Bio bringing this resolution to the global stage matters so deeply. Every country that has changed its laws on child marriage has done so because survivors and advocates refused to stay silent, and this resolution adds global weight to that fight. Child marriage steals childhoods. My hope is that the world stops looking away and starts confronting the devastating consequences it has for girls’ lives.”
Across sub-Saharan Africa, nearly one in three women were married before turning 18 — the highest regional rate of child marriage in the world. In Niger, in West Africa’s Sahel region, 76 percent of women were married as children, the highest rate of any country in the world.
Former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been one of the most prominent U.S. figures to elevate child marriage as a global policy issue, both during her time at the State Department and in the years since.
“Every instance of child marriage forecloses a world of possibilities for a young girl. She is robbed of the opportunity to grow up safe and healthy and to pursue an education, and the world loses her participation and her ideas,” Secretary Clinton told More to Her Story. “I am so grateful to First Lady Fatima Bio for her work to champion this resolution to adoption, and to everyone who continues to fight to give girls and young women the right to freely and boldly decide their own futures.”
In March, a report commissioned by Sheryl Sandberg, the founder of Lean In, and released by Columbia University’s Institute of Global Politics and the Center for Global Development found that child marriage costs the global economy up to $175 billion a year.
“Every girl, regardless of where in the world she is born, deserves the right to choose the course of her own life,” Ms. Sandberg told More to Her Story. “When children are forced to marry, they are taken out of school early, have children while they are still children themselves, and too often die in childbirth. Girls deserve the opportunity to live up to their full potential and contribute to their societies and communities. Today, the world took an important step toward recognizing the value and dignity of all girls by calling for an end to child marriage.”