Sample Letter
On your organisation’s letterhead:
[Name and address of letter recipient]
[Date]
[Salutation]
Re: Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals - end child, early and forced marriage
As [insert country] is a member of the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs), we write to ask for your commitment to ensuring that child, early and forced marriage remains a
target in the final report of the OWG. We welcome the inclusion of a target to ‘eliminate all harmful
practices, including child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilations' under proposed goal 5
‘attain gender equality, empower women and girls everywhere’ of the OWG’s zero draft and call on
[country] to make a statement supporting the retention of ‘ending child, early and forced marriage’ as a
target in the next OWG session this month.
[If appropriate:]We welcome/note [country’s] comments at the 10th/11th OWG session:
[Insert information on your country’s position
on child, early and forced marriage in the OWG
from the attached table]
Child, early and forced marriage is not only a significant violation of the rights of 14 million girls around the
world each year, but it has also been a key barrier to achieving 6 of the 8 Millennium Development Goals. As
the world considers how we are to achieve sustainable development over the next 15 years, it would be
short-sighted to ignore a practice that holds back progress toward gender equity, health, education and
economic development.





While rates of child marriage have declined over recent decades in many regions of the world, it
continues to affect approximately 14 million girls every year. One in 3 girls in the developing world
is married by age 18, and 1 in 9 is married by age 15, some as young as eight or nine.
Child marriage is a global problem which cuts across countries, cultures, religions and ethnicities:
46% of girls are married before age 18 in South Asia; 39% in sub-Saharan Africa; 29% in Latin
America and the Caribbean; 18% in the Middle East and North Africa; and in some communities in
Europe and North America too.
The continued existence of child marriage around the world is a symptom of the historic lack of
attention given to the needs and rights of adolescent girls.
Girls who marry young do not receive the educational and economic opportunities that help lift
them out of poverty and which are necessary to build a sustainable and prosperous future for their
communities and countries.
Child marriage denies girls and women their rights to health, education, equality, nondiscrimination, and to live free from violence and exploitation, including slavery and servitude.



Child marriage entrenches gender inequality and undermines girls’ rights to choose if, when and
whom to marry, to participate in the decisions that affect them, to live free from all forms of stigma,
coercion, discrimination and violence.
Child marriage holds back progress on maternal and child health: Child brides face higher risk of
death and injury due to early sexual activity and childbearing. Girls under 15 are five times more
likely to die in childbirth than women aged 20 to 24. Adolescent girls who marry more sexually
experienced older men may be at heightened risk of HIV/AIDS. The children of child brides are at
substantially greater risk of perinatal infant mortality and morbidity, and stillbirths and newborn
deaths are 50% higher in mothers younger than 20 years than in women who give birth later.
Child marriage rates are already being tracked through household surveys (MICs, DHS, etc.) in most
developing countries, allowing for the development of indicators and measures that do not present
a significant additional data collection burden on countries.
[As appropriate, add a paragraph on the impact of child marriage in your country and how it undermines
rights and development.]
[If your country is a member of the AU, you may want to include the following:]
We welcome the AU Campaign to ‘End Child Marriage Now’ which reinforces commitments of African
governments, including Article 6 of the Maputo Protocol which calls for a minimum age of marriage as well
as consent of both parties, and an acceleration of action to bring an end to the practice. We are happy to
note that the Campaign recognises that the agenda of sustainable development and transformation will not
be realised unless we end child marriage now. We look forward to your support in ensuring this is a reality.
While ending child marriage is an important aim in itself, it will also help accelerate efforts to achieve a safe,
healthy and prosperous future for girls around the world and in [country]. We therefore urge [country], as a
member of the Open Working Group, to make a statement in the upcoming OWG session in support of
explicitly including ‘ending child, early and forced marriage’ as a target in the final Open Working Group
report.
Yours sincerely,