Accelerating action to end child marriage in Bangladesh—Project brief

Bangladesh ranks among the five countries with the highest rate of child marriage in the world. Community norms and values are among the underlying factors that support the practice of child marriage in Bangladesh. The Population Council is partnering with the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs to delay marriage as part of the UNFPA-UNICEF Global Program to Accelerate Action to End Child Marriage. This program is being implemented to generate evidence on reduction of child marriage through an adolescent skills-building program. The project works to empower girls with life-skills and livelihood and gender-awareness trainings, as well as engaging communities to address normative drivers of child marriage and identify the best strategy for reducing child marriage. The intervention approaches are evaluated in a four-arm cluster randomized control study with 72 intervention villages allocated to three arms and 24 control villages. As noted in this brief, the design intends to assess the impact of skills, as well as the added contribution of community engagement involving women and men