During an event co-organized by Canada and Zambia on the sidelines of the Summit of the Future, the Minister for the Advancement of Women, Children and Vulnerable Persons provided a worrying overview of the challenges of eradicating early marriage in Guinea, while highlighting the progress made and the necessary actions to come.
In Guinea, almost half of girls are still married before the age of 18, according to the latest available data. An alarming statistic which, despite continued efforts, remains a major obstacle to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, in particular that of eliminating child marriage. Minister Charlotte Daffé reaffirmed the Guinean government’s commitment to responding to this social crisis, stressing that “Guinea’s future depends on the protection of its children and respect for their rights.”
The Guinean Minister for the Promotion of Women also presented the government objective of reducing the prevalence of early marriage by 20 points by 2030, a reduction from 46% to 26%. “This objective reflects a determination to accelerate the fight against this practice, but it requires financial resources and a reinforced collective commitment, both at the national and international level. »
From 2025, a program dedicated to the protection and well-being of children will be included in the Public Investment Budget, marking progress on the programmatic level. This program will focus on the care of vulnerable children and the development of integrated policies aimed at their protection.
However, Charlotte Daffé did not fail to highlight the significant challenges that are hampering progress, calling them “main obstacles” to the eradication of child marriage in Guinea. She denounced the slow mobilization of the funds necessary to finance the priority actions planned as part of the national strategic plan.
“Although legal progress has been made, deeply ingrained social norms and beliefs continue to resist institutional change. This gap between legislation and social reality slows down progress. The latest data on child marriage in Guinea dates back to 2018. The absence of recent information limits the effectiveness of actions, hence the need to strengthen data collection mechanisms,” she stressed.
To overcome these challenges, Charlotte Daffé made several key recommendations including the establishment of a joint financing mechanism to support the interventions of the national strategic plan to promote the abandonment of child marriage. According to her, this solution would make it possible to quickly raise the necessary funds by bringing together international partners and local actors.
Finally, the minister pleaded for a strengthening of the coordination mechanism, in particular through the gradual deployment of the CPIMS+PRIMERO application and the “VBG Guinea Alert” platform, which would make it possible to better collect and analyze data on Violence based on gender and child marriage.
