COVID-19 Threatens Decades of Progress on Gender Equality. This World Children’s Day, We Must Fight Back.

COVID-19 has left no one untouched, but it has had an especially pernicious impact on girls—most particularly those from already marginalized communities.

From a dramatic rise in sex trafficking in Malawi, to spiraling rates of sexual violence in India, from subversive restrictions on access to abortion in the U.S. to an increase in teen pregnancy and female genital mutilation in Kenya, it is clear that COVID-19 is an existential threat to gender equality.

There’s a Simple Solution to End Child Marriage in North Carolina

New studies by the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) reveal the grim consequences of child marriage in the U.S., which occurs at particularly high rates in North Carolina. North Carolina is becoming a common destination for adults to take children when their marriage is illegal in their home states. Between 2000 and 2015, almost 9,000 minors were listed on marriage license applications in North Carolina.

But there’s a simple solution: Set the minimum age of marriage at 18, without exceptions.