By Jerry Giovanardi.
Child marriage is a truly global problem that cuts across countries, cultures, religions and ethnicities. Each year, 12 million girls are married before the age of 18. That is 23 girls every minute. Nearly 1 every 3 seconds. The U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, estimates more than 650 million women alive today had been married off when they were before the age of 18.
The statistical analysis show that if child marriage had continued, more than 150 million girls will marry by 2030. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have set a target “To eliminate child, early or forced marriage by 2030”.
According to SDG 5.3 which has targeted the end child of marriage by 2030, Shahin Gavanji and Jahangir Gavanji, two world peace ambassadors, launched a new international program in 2019 which is called “Painting your dreams for your future”, and invite all children in world to stand against child marriage.
In this program they asked all children in the world to paint their dreams for their future. All children in the world were invited to Join the program in taking action to advance gender equality and end child marriage, and announced to children that they are artists of their life, letting them to paint their dreams for their own future.
The campaign received 1869 painting from 41 countries (Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mauritius, Azerbaijan, Portugal, Turkey, Thailand, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Egypt, Lebanon, Canada, Romania, Sri Lanka, Somalia, The United States, Iraq, Philippines, The United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, Sierra Leone, Sweden, Malaysia, Italy, Zimbabwe, Croatia, Finland, India, Indonesia, Bahrain, Uganda, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kenya), and children send a united message that “Child marriages should be banned and together we can make world free of child marriage.”
The goals of this campaign:
- Raising awareness on child marriage and declares the negative impacts on overall development, prosperity, and stability.
- Send a message that education is a powerful strategy in keeping girls from child marriage, since educated youth paves the way for a better future for the country and every child has the right to dream for his or hers future and it’s a duty of parents to help and encourage them.
- Calling the attention of governments to reinforce their commitment to end child marriage by 2030.
