UNHCR & Plan International: What we learned about child marriage and case management in refugee settings

Plan International and UNHCR have been collaborating since 2021 to improve the support we provide to girls who are at risk of child marriage, as well as ever-married girls.1 The collaboration focuses on the prevention and response to child marriage across both child protection (CP) and gender-based violence (GBV) sectors in three different refugee and mixed displacement contexts. This brief summarises the main lessons learned from the project. It is based on a technical paper and a frontline worker checklist that seek to improve the handling of child marriage cases in CP and GBV case management. While piloting took place in refugee and mixed displacement settings, the findings are also relevant to case management practices in all types of humanitarian settings. Since girls are disproportionately and most adversely affected by the practice of child marriage, improving services for girls was the priority of the collaboration.