FROM THE FIELD: Gaza men advocate for an end to early marriage

UN Women/Eunjin Jeong Mossa Abu Taema, one of the 20 first ambassadors of change who persuaded his community members to stop early marriages.

This article is brought to you in association with the United Nations.

A group of thirty men in Gaza have succeeded in preventing the early marriage of girls under the age of 18, from 50 different families, thanks to a training programme supported by the UN gender agency, UN Women. One of them, Mossa Abu Taema, convinced the father of a 16-year-old in one of the most conservative villages in eastern Khan Younis, a border town in the Gaza Strip, to cancel her wedding and allow her to continue her education. An estimated 21 per cent of marriages in Gaza in 2017, involved girls under-18. Ahead of the annual 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaign which begins on 25 November, read more here about how men are reversing traditional norms and promoting gender equality.

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