Azra Abdul Cader of ARROW was recently at an Expert Group Meeting on the Evidence Base for Accelerated Action to End Child Marriage in South Asia. The meeting was organized by UNFPA Asia-Pacific and UNICEF South Asia and was held in Bangkok, Thailand from 26-28 September 2016.
Objectives of this meeting included examining selected promising practices in child marriage interventions at regional and country level, including interventions that have been robustly evaluated, refine a common understanding of successful strategies to end child marriage in South Asia, and discuss and explore methodologies and approaches for monitoring and evaluating interventions and assessing impact. Participants also identified key priorities for additional research on and/or evaluation of programmes and interventions to end child marriage.
The meeting also focused on identifying issues that, while recognized, are usually not factored into programming in a holistic and effective manner. This can often happen with issues such as SRHR and culture and religion and Azra made a presentation on why realizing SRHR could accelerate action to end child marriage in South Asia.