Using SBC to Enhance Programs to End Child, Early, and Forced Marriage

Child, early and forced marriage (CEFM), defined as marriage before age 18 or marriage that occurs without the consent of those in the marriage, affects an estimated 15 million girls each year.

CEFM is perpetuated by many factors, including but not limited to poverty, conflict, gender inequality, social and cultural norms, religious beliefs, and economic incentives. Looking forward, efforts to reduce the number of girls at risk for CEFM will increasingly struggle to keep pace with population growth; leading to virtually the same number of girls at risk for CEFM within the next few decades if actions to end CEFM are not accelerated.

This series of briefs proposes social and behavior change (SBC) approaches to strenghten the collective effort to reduce CEFM.

There are seven briefs in the series that focus on:

1. Advanced Audience Segmentation: By learning more about your audience and segmenting them into smaller groups you can better target your interventions and influence behavior change to end CEFM.
2. Collective Action: By bringing together members of a community to discuss CEFM and envision a different future for their community, progress can be made at a larger scale and with greater chance of lasting change.
3. Gender Synchronization: When designing a gender synchronized approach for CEFM, you should consider the needs of all genders and address the power imbalances that often exist in communities.
4. Human-Centered Design: Human-centered design can help you discover new approaches that put empathy at the core and ensure the community leads the design of programming.
5. Social Norms programming: Different social norms are often contributing factors in the persistence of CEFM in communities. By designing norms-shifting interventions, you can begin to tackle these long-standing influencers.
6. Theories: Using theories can help you to develop effective programs to reduce CEFM. Theories can provide a framework to build your program around to lead to behavior change.
7. Youth Engagements: By engaging youth in CEFM programing from design through to evaluation, and including activities to strengthen youth’s agency, you can increase the sustainability and impact of your program.

Each brief was developed from analyzing successful interventions conducted all over the world. Interventions and programs that are creative, multi-faceted, and innovative will be required in order to address the factors contributing to the prevalence and impact of CEFM.

Last modified: March 16, 2026