The AU Commission will hold the Second African Girls Summit on ending child marriage under the theme: “Taking the AU Campaign to End Child Marriage forward: through promotion of adolescent sexual and reproductive health rights” in Accra, Ghana.
The Summit aims to address the core need of investing in adolescent education specifically access to services such as sexual health care, sexuality education and rights protection.
The Summit will be a follow-up on the 1st AGS- where the main objective was to share experiences and good practices as well as challenges on ending child marriages at country, regional and international levels, particularly with countries that have already launched the AUC Campaign on ending Girls’ Child Marriage.
In light of this the second AGS will be looking at progress on commitments, interventions, measures and recommendations of keeping girls in school and facilitating Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR).
Two days prior to the Girls Summit there will also be a Youth Pre- Summit from 21 – 22 November for youth where they would be given the opportunity to bring their ideas from different perspectives such as education for boys and girls, sexual reproductive health, ending child marriage, the role of the youth in community, among others and the way forward.
The AU Commission views child marriage as a crosscutting issue and recognizes that it is a development, cultural, health, political and religious issue – among others.
The AU specifically promotes policies related to young people’s’ rights and is mandated by its various instruments focusing on the rights of children and youth and has promoted adaptation and implementation of these instruments at regional and national level as well as conducted monitoring of implementation by Member States to ensure accountability.
