Thirty years after the Beijing Declaration, legal inequality persists across the world. Words & Deeds: Holding Governments Accountable in the Beijing+30 Review Process, the sixth edition in our Words & Deeds series that began in 1999, exposes that governments have failed to repeal or amend sex-discriminatory laws and highlights the urgent reforms needed to achieve full legal equality for women and girls.
The report includes:
Child marriage remains a deeply rooted issue in Palestine, affecting thousands of girls—particularly in refugee and conflict-affected communities. Despite efforts to raise the legal age of marriage to 18, weak enforcement, judicial exemptions, and ongoing humanitarian crises continue to undermine progress. The practice is closely linked to poverty, gender inequality, and prolonged instability, which leave families with limited options and push many girls into early marriage as a form of protection.
Child marriage remains a deeply rooted issue in Palestine, affecting thousands of girls—particularly in refugee and conflict-affected communities. Despite efforts to raise the legal age of marriage to 18, weak enforcement, judicial exemptions, and ongoing humanitarian crises continue to undermine progress. The practice is closely linked to poverty, gender inequality, and prolonged instability, which leave families with limited options and push many girls into early marriage as a form of protection.
Child marriage remains a deeply rooted issue in Palestine, affecting thousands of girls—particularly in refugee and conflict-affected communities. Despite efforts to raise the legal age of marriage to 18, weak enforcement, judicial exemptions, and ongoing humanitarian crises continue to undermine progress. The practice is closely linked to poverty, gender inequality, and prolonged instability, which leave families with limited options and push many girls into early marriage as a form of protection.
This story was submitted by Yemen Women Union as part of the Regional Action Forum's IDGC 2025 Campaign
RAF's annual report for 2024 covers all of our achievements related to technical webinars, research, advocacy and coordination efforts for child marriage prevention in the region.
Programming to prevent and respond to child marriage in humanitarian settings is vital to the health, safety and wellbeing of women and girls, but little documentation or evaluation of programmes and best practices exists to guide implementation.
UNICEF Innocenti undertook a study in five countries in the Middle East, speaking with more than 60 practitioners and policymakers to understand the challenges faced in designing and implementing child-marriage focused programming in complex and diverse humanitarian settings as well as the facilitators that enable effective programming.
Casablanca, 25 May 2024 – From May 22 to 24, 14 RAF INGO, NGO, UN, and academic members took part in the Child Marriage Solutions Workshop (CMSW) in Casablanca, Morocco, where more than 45 UNICEF and UNFPA child protection and gender experts, as well as NGO partners, gathered to discuss the preliminary findings from UNICEF Innocenti’s most recent study on child marriage in the Middle East.
We are delighted to share RAF's December 2024 Newsletter with you.
We are delighted to share RAF's June 2025 Newsletter with you.