Child Marriage

The marriage or informal union between a child under 18 years old to an adult or another child. Child marriages affect one in five girls around the world and lead to increased risks of intimate partner violence, impoverishment, child pregnancy and insufficient education.

Keeping Score: Abortion Bans Cost $140B Per Year; Federal Courts Protect Trans Youth and Incarcerated Trans Women; Feminists React to FBI Raid on Ohio Voting Rights Organization

PUBLISHED 6/24/2026 by

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week:
—Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas) is working to get Republicans on the record on the Right to Contraception Act.
—ICE has already reported the deaths of 18 detainees this year, on pace to surpass the highest number of deaths in decades.
—Abortion restrictions could cost the U.S. economy $140 billion annually in lost earnings.
—”I love the inflation,” says Trump.
—The EEOC will no longer require federal agencies to report on race, ethnicity, sex or gender identity.
—83 percent of American voters agree that emergency contraception should be easily accessible.
—Abortion ban states are slowly losing a generation of women medical students and doctors.
—More than 770,000 children have already lost access to SNAP benefits after last year’s funding cuts.
—A new study found trans women athletes have no significant physical advantages over cis women.
—Missouri has restored access to medication abortions after a Jackson County judge struck down key state restrictions, allowing clinics to resume providing the service and marking the first time medication abortion has been available in Missouri since 2018.
—Republicans passed a reconciliation bill that provides roughly $70 billion for ICE and CBP, sending it to President Trump’s desk. (This is on top of more than $140 billion Republicans already provided for those agencies last year.)

… and more.

Imagining a World Where No Mothers Die

PUBLISHED 5/8/2026 by

More than 700 women die each day, on average, from causes linked to pregnancy or childbirth. Almost all of these deaths are preventable. 

To honor the world’s mothers, we asked midwives about their memories of helping women survive the journey to motherhood. And we asked how the world would be different if no woman died in the act of creating life.

Ms. Global: Energy Crisis in Cuba, Feminist Activist Assassinated in Iraq, Gay Asylum-Seeker Deported and More

PUBLISHED 4/8/2026 by and

The U.S. ranks as the 19th most dangerous country for women, 11th in maternal mortality, 30th in closing the gender pay gap, 75th in women’s political representation, and painfully lacks paid family leave and equal access to healthcare. But Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.

This month:
—Seoul holds the 41st Women’s Strike in South Korea for International Women’s Day.
—Hospital patients suffer during Cuba’s three major blackouts.
—The U.S. is at fault for the missile strike that hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls’ School in Minab, Iran, on Feb. 28, killing 175 people.
—Yanar Mohammed, a leading Iraqi feminist and human rights defender, was killed in an armed attack in Baghdad.
—IOC restricts transgender participation in Olympics.
—Amid widespread displacement, poverty and institutional collapse during the ongoing war in Gaza, families are increasingly turning to child marriage for their daughters.

… and more.

The Erosion of Women’s Rights Is a Warning Sign for Democracies Everywhere

PUBLISHED 3/17/2026 by

Over 30 years ago, world leaders came together in Beijing and made a promise: Gender equality would be a global standard, not a distant aspiration. This March, as the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women convenes for CSW70 under the theme of strengthening access to justice and eliminating discriminatory laws, that promise remains not only unfinished, but increasingly under coordinated assault.

Since 1999, Equality Now’s Words & Deeds reports have tracked laws and policies that discriminate against women and girls, documenting progress when legal reform has been achieved and holding governments accountable when words fail to translate into action.

Our new Words & Deeds update, Progress and Backlash: Accountability for the Rights of Women and Girls, shows that we are at a perilous moment of global regression in women’s rights. Across regions, protections once considered settled are being diluted, defunded and, in some cases, deliberately dismantled.

Sundance 2026: In Documentary ‘One in a Million,’ a Syrian Girl’s Life in Exile Reveals the Long Road After War

PUBLISHED 3/6/2026 by

Winner of Sundance’s Audience Award in the World Cinema Documentary category, as well as the Directing Award for filmmakers Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes, One in a Million lives up to its title. It homes in with a laser focus on the experiences of Israa, a Syrian girl whose family undertakes the perilous migration to Germany after the start of the Syrian civil war.

When the filmmakers first meet Israa in 2015, she is an inquisitive 11-year-old selling cigarettes on the street in Turkey while her family waits for the chance to cross the Mediterranean. The journey that follows—overcrowded rafts, long treks across multiple borders and nights spent sleeping on the street—contains harrowing moments, but it ultimately occupies only a sliver of the film’s larger story.

Once the family arrives in Germany, where the filmmakers check in with them over the next nine years, One in a Million reveals a far more complicated and intimate portrait of migration and acculturation.

As Israa grows from child to teenager to young adult, she navigates questions of identity, freedom and belonging, while her mother Nisreen becomes increasingly confident and independent in a country that offers opportunities she was denied in Syria. The result is a quietly riveting portrait of family life in transition, showing how the experience of displacement continues to reshape relationships, expectations and the possibilities of who each person might become.

(This is one in a series of film reviews from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, focused on films by women, trans or nonbinary directors that tell compelling stories about the lives of women and girls.)

From DM’s to I Do’s: Five Ways Social Media Is Reshaping Child Marriage

PUBLISHED 3/4/2026 by

As the world goes digital, so does the ancient practice of child marriage. 

More than half a billion women and girls living today are, or were, child brides. Among young adult women aged 20 to 24, one in five was married before age 18.

But that doesn’t mean that child marriage has stayed the same. There has been gradual progress in ending child marriage (around a decade ago, one in four women was married under 18). And technology is playing a growing role, both in cases where girls say “I do” and in cases where they say “I don’t.”

Serious Work Begins to Create a Treaty on Crimes Against Humanity

PUBLISHED 2/3/2026 by and

Afghanistan. Myanmar. Syria. The Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Over the last 80 years, there has rarely been a situation of atrocity that has not been marked by the commission of crimes against humanity. These crimes, defined by their widespread or systematic nature, target civilians and devastate societies.

Yet, while the international community has created legal regimes to address war crimes and genocide, we lack a global legal architecture for the prevention, suppression and punishment of crimes against humanity, leaving millions across the globe at risk and justice elusive for survivors.

The start of negotiations for such a treaty is not just overdue; it is of historic importance. Late last month, the United Nations General Assembly launched a four-year process to prepare for and negotiate a new global treaty to prevent and punish crimes against humanity by 2028. If it is crafted with ambition and resolve, it can be a game-changer for international accountability, strengthen the rules-based order and offer hope and justice to victims and survivors.

Ms. Global: Iraq’s Child Marriage Surge, Hurricane Devastation in Jamaica, Historic EU Abortion Vote and More

PUBLISHED 1/7/2026 by and

The U.S. ranks as the 19th most dangerous country for women, 11th in maternal mortality, 30th in closing the gender pay gap, 75th in women’s political representation, and painfully lacks paid family leave and equal access to health care. But Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.

This week: News from Iraq, Jamaica, the EU, Cambodia and Thailand, and more.

Why Won’t the U.S. Stop Child Marriage?

PUBLISHED 11/11/2025 by

Child marriage is a persistent, evolving, global problem, and the United States is far from immune: Between 2000 and 2018, nearly 300,000 children were married in America—most of them girls wed to adult men.

Lack of a strong legal framework to prevent child marriage in the U.S. contributes to its prevalence. Banning child marriage is still in the best interest of America’s children and teens.

Gender-Based Violence Rises in Gaza, Case Workers Tell of Harrowing Conditions: ‘There Aren’t Enough Safe Spaces for Women and Their Children’

PUBLISHED 7/22/2025 by

“There’s been a sharp increase in survivors seeking help,” said Suhair, who works at a safe space for women and girls in Gaza’s central Deir El-Balah Governorate.  “We’re working under extremely difficult conditions, including repeated incursions. There aren’t enough safe spaces for women and their children,” she told UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency. 

Repeated, forced displacements, movement restrictions and a prolonged lack of fuel and electricity have also made it more difficult to help those most at risk. “We’re providing services over the phone because survivors can’t reach safe spaces,” added Suhair.

Widespread illness, poverty, mass displacement and depleted healthcare and social services are all heightening stress levels within households. These exacerbated conditions have led to rising reports of increased domestic violence, sexual exploitation and abuse. Many are turning to child labor and forced marriages to cope with devastating levels of hunger.

With over 714,000 people—one third of Gaza’s population—forced to move again over the past three months, families are being separated and the local support structures they once relied on have crumbled. Women and girls in particular describe feeling afraid on the street, at aid delivery points and in overcrowded, makeshift shelters that lack privacy, sanitation or basic security measures.