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STORY: UN / LEAVE NO BRIDE BEHIND
TRT: 03:07
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 19 MARCH 2025, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE - NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, UN Headquarters
19 MARCH 2025, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, ECOSOC Chamber
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Sarah Hendriks, Director of Policy, Programme & Intergovernmental Division, UN Women:
“Child marriage must end. Our latest data says that it will take 68 years for that to happen. So not in 68 years, which our projections say is that pace, but it must end now. We are long past due from the promise that was made in Beijing 30 years ago.”
4. Wide shot, ECOSOC Chamber
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Sarah Hendriks, Director of Policy, Programme & Intergovernmental Division, UN Women:
“It takes a whole of society approach, a resolute UN system, committed member states, a well-resourced civil society to end once and for all child marriage.”
6. Med shot, participants
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Sarah Hendriks, Director of Policy, Programme & Intergovernmental Division, UN Women:
“Right now, what we are seeing is an unprecedented backlash against gender equality and women's rights everywhere. This is not a new backlash. It's been with us for a long time. What's new is its speed at scale, its velocity.”
8. Wide shot, ECOSOC Chamber
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Sarah Hendriks, Director of Policy, Programme & Intergovernmental Division, UN Women:
“What we are seeing is an increasingly hostile environment to advance existing gender equality commitments, such as SDG 5.3. And so, consequently, this organized opposition, which is now increasingly more well-funded and increasingly coming from multiple sources, is promoting very traditional and patriarchal notions of what is expected of women, of what is expected of girls, and reinforcing traditional notions of girlhood, that pull us back in time rather than move us forward.”
10. Wide shot, ECOSOC Chamber
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Chelsea Clinton, Vice Chair, Clinton Foundation:
“We've banned child marriage in 13 states and a number of territories. I won't ask you to raise your cards because I think, you know, we know that we have 50 states, and we know that 13 still leaves an extraordinary amount to go. We are not immune to the backlash that Sarah spoke about. We arguably have kind of created the tools and the mechanisms and facilitated the funding sources that have fueled much of the backlash here in the United States and globally and I think we have to be candid about that.”
12. Wide shot, ECOSOC Chamber
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Chelsea Clinton, Vice Chair, Clinton Foundation:
“But we also, thankfully, have extraordinary, kind of local and national leaders who are indefatigable, kind of in the belief that our collective energies, commitment, actions and optimism, can ameliorate that backlash and once again put us on the path of progress., whether by 2030 or not, at least kind of continuing to march forward.”
14. Med shot, participants
Despite agreements like UN Sustainable Development Goal 5.3 and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, much of the world still falls short in protecting girls from forced and child marriage.
Today (19 Mar) at the event ‘No Child Left a Bride’ at the UNHQ, representatives from Sierra Leone and the Dominican Republic, Unchained at Last, the Clinton Global Initiative, Equality Now, UN Women and African Child Policy Forum talked about multi-stakeholder successes and setbacks in the global effort to ban child marriage and achieve gender equality by year 2030.
Sarah Hendriks, Director of UN Women Policy, Programme & Intergovernmental Division said, “Child marriage must end. Our latest data says that it will take 68 years for that to happen. So not in 68 years, which our projections say is that pace, but it must end now. We are long past due from the promise that was made in Beijing 30 years ago.”
She stressed, “It takes a whole of society approach, a resolute UN system, committed member states, a well-resourced civil society to end once and for all child marriage.”
She highlighted, “Right now, what we are seeing is an unprecedented backlash against gender equality and women's rights everywhere. This is not a new backlash. It's been with us for a long time. What's new is its speed at scale, its velocity.”
She continued, “What we are seeing is an increasingly hostile environment to advance existing gender equality commitments, such as SDG 5.3. And so, consequently, this organized opposition, which is now increasingly more well-funded and increasingly coming from multiple sources, is promoting very traditional and patriarchal notions of what is expected of women, of what is expected of girls, and reinforcing traditional notions of girlhood, that pull us back in time rather than move us forward.”
Talking about the United States, Chelsea Clinton, Vice Chair of Clinton Foundation said, “We've banned child marriage in 13 states and a number of territories. I won't ask you to raise your cards because I think, you know, we know that we have 50 states, and we know that 13 still leaves an extraordinary amount to go. We are not immune to the backlash that Sarah spoke about. We arguably have kind of created the tools and the mechanisms and facilitated the funding sources that have fueled much of the backlash here in the United States and globally and I think we have to be candid about that.”
She concluded, “But we also, thankfully, have extraordinary, kind of local and national leaders who are indefatigable, kind of in the belief that our collective energies, commitment, actions and optimism, can ameliorate that backlash and once again put us on the path of progress., whether by 2030 or not, at least kind of continuing to march forward.”
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