UNFPA and UNICEF welcome CA$ 35 million contribution from the Government of Canada to end child marriage

Canada has committed additional funding in support of girls and women’s rights during the 2023 Women Deliver conference taking place in Rwanda

20 July 2023, Kigali (Rwanda) – UNICEF and UNFPA, the UN sexual and reproductive health agency, welcome the commitment of CA$35 million by the Government of Canada to support the third phase of the Global Programme to End Child Marriage until 2030.

This contribution comes at a critical time and will enable the partners to respond to an increasingly challenging world for girls caused by the intersecting crises of climate change, the aftermath of the global COVID-19 pandemic, and conflicts and natural disasters that drive even greater vulnerability.

According to the latest data, an estimated 640 million girls and women alive today were married in childhood. While child marriage is declining, progress is not fast enough to reach the Sustainable Development Goal target of eliminating the practice by 2030. The Canadian contribution will be focused on scaling up, accelerating and adapting programmes to an ever-changing environment caused by the different crises.

“We are at the mid-point on delivering on SDGs and we still need a lot to deliver on gender equality and more specifically on child marriage,” said Nankali Maksud, UNICEF Senior Child Protection Advisor. “We need to speed up progress to be nearly 20 times faster to reach the target of ending child marriage by 2030. The Canadian funding is a big step in that direction,” she added.

At Women Deliver, Canada has delivered for adolescent girls," said Willibald Zeck, Sexual and Reproductive Health Branch Chief, UNFPA. "Complications from pregnancy and childbirth kill more adolescent girls than any other cause. These funds will prevent that needless suffering of girls across the world and empower them to exercise bodily autonomy and become the architects of their future."

The UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to End Child Marriage was launched in 2016 in twelve of the most high-prevalence or high-burden countries in the world. The programme promotes the rights of adolescent girls to avert marriage and pregnancy, and enables them to achieve their aspirations through education, comprehensive sexuality education and alternative pathways. In 2022, the partners were able to reach 6.3 million girls providing them with life skills or comprehensive sexuality education and 161,000 girls were supported to enrol and stay in school.

The programme is an example of how the UN is coming together with partners like Canada to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals through broad based partnerships with donors, Member States, women-led, and youth-led organisations.

The Global Programme to End Child Marriage is generously supported by the Governments of Belgium, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom, the European Union and Zonta International.

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For more information, please contact:

• UNICEF: Angela Travis: atravis@unicef.org +254 700 765 164
• UNFPA: Eddie Wright: ewright@unfpa.org +1 917 831 2074

About UNFPA:

UNFPA is the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency. UNFPA's mission is to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled. UNFPA calls for the realization of reproductive rights for all and supports access to a wide range of sexual and reproductive health services, including voluntary family planning, quality maternal health care and comprehensive sexuality education.