Within this framework, one of the organizations we collaborate with is the Flying Broom Women’s Communication and Research Association. As part of the support program we implemented together with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the association carries out activities to prevent child, early, and forced marriages. In this context, we spoke with Selen Doğan from Flying Broom about both the project and the broader issue of child, early, and forced marriages.
Flying Broom has been working with girls for many years. One of your core priorities has been child marriage, an area in which you have considerable experience. To begin with, what kind of resistance have you observed when it comes to addressing this issue?
“Child” and “marriage” are two words that should never stand side by side… As an activist who has worked both in the field and at the desk for nearly 20 years to prevent child, early, and forced marriages, I have often witnessed how society perceives the coexistence of these two words as legitimate and respectable. Strong cultural norms and beliefs that frame marriage as an indispensable and non-deferrable stage of life have often undermined the recognition that marrying off children is neither legal nor acceptable, and that it should and can be prevented.
Those who make marriage decisions on behalf of children, those who support such decisions, those who cannot even imagine an alternative, or those who remain silent under cultural pressures continue to normalize child marriage for various reasons even today. Globally, every three seconds a girl is married off. In our own country, the lack of up-to-date, comprehensive, and independent research remains an obstacle to accessing accurate data, yet we know that on average one in every four marriages involves a child. Since marriage statistics are published based only on officially registered marriages, it is extremely difficult to uncover the large number of unregistered, informal marriages.
If we ask about the link between child marriage and gender inequality:
We can clearly see how gender intersects with other forms of marginalization by looking at girls, who occupy the lowest rung of the family hierarchy in a patriarchal social structure. The imposition of wife and mother roles on women, the preparation of girls for marriage from an early age, and the absence of alternative life prospects all drive the age of marriage downward.
Girls who are married off face severe limitations: their sexual and reproductive health rights, their access to education and justice, their protection from domestic violence, discrimination, and abuse, as well as opportunities for socialization and cultural participation, interaction with peers, and the realization of their potential are all significantly undermined. Global indicators show that without ending child marriage, at least eight of the Sustainable Development Goals cannot be achieved.
You mentioned that cultural norms are what make child marriage “acceptable” in the eyes of society. But we also know that social values and cultural norms tend to be rather “rigid,” and change in these areas is often difficult. What would you say?
Marriage is a right for adults. People can choose to marry or not marry within the framework of the law. No one can be forced into marriage, nor should anyone face social pressure, prejudice, or criticism for choosing not to marry. Yet the prevalence of early and forced marriages proves that the issue is rarely viewed in this way.
Although the average age of first marriage has risen compared to past decades, the problem of child marriage persists. International law recognizes child, early, and forced marriage as a form of gender-based violence and a violation of human rights. In today’s context of multiple, overlapping crises, the drivers of child marriage go far beyond the “darkness” of culture or poverty alone. At the core are absent or poorly designed policies. Direct and indirect causes include income inequality, deep poverty, unplanned urbanization, displacement and migration, climate change, the glorification of marriage and family, reproductive pressure, misogyny, heterosexism, conservatism, armed conflicts, pandemics, and more. With such a wide and evolving range of factors shaping child marriage, strategies to address the issue must also be updated and adapted.
You say that strategies to combat child, early, and forced marriage need to change. Speaking specifically about Flying Broom, what is your focus?
Since our founding, the Flying Broom Women’s Communication and Research Association has carried out work that draws attention to this rights violation. At the heart of our advocacy- and communication-based efforts is the empowerment of girls and the insistence that the legal foundations for saying “no” to child marriage must not be overlooked. The activities we carry out in this context vary depending on how we address child marriage: concept discussion workshops, field research, in-person and online talks, reporting to international human rights mechanisms, as well as the production of thematic documents, which remains one of our key areas of work.
Within the framework of a program jointly implemented by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Civil Society Development Center (STGM), two of our projects received support.
The first, carried out in 2023–2024, was the project “Combating Child Marriage: Changing Dynamics, New Tools.” In this project, we published an Atlas featuring examples of child marriage prevention from 52 countries, a Guide for journalists and digital content producers, a Glossary of concepts related to child marriage, a Typology of early and forced marriages, and three Policy Briefs to guide practitioners in the field. All of these documents are available in the Resource Center on our website.
The second project, to be completed in October 2025, is titled “Strengthening the International Advocacy Capacity of Civil Society Organizations for the Prevention of Child Marriage.”
What is your focus in this new project period?
There are two main motivations behind our decision to prioritize international advocacy in this project. The first is the need for civil society organizations, facing increasing restrictions and pressure, to pool their knowledge and strengthen intersectionality as a core advocacy practice. Contributing to each other’s work from our respective fields—for example, by exploring how child marriage intersects with disability, migration, or climate change—broadens collective experience. This, in turn, fosters the ability to recognize the multilayered nature of rights violations and to develop multidimensional advocacy strategies.
The second motivation arises from the weakening of dialogue between civil society and public authorities in a national context marked by multiple crises. The erosion of dialogue with elected officials (such as municipalities and members of parliament) and appointed authorities (such as government institutions) makes it increasingly difficult to generate the pressure needed to improve national legislation in favor of children. In such an environment, it becomes all the more important for civil society organizations to rely on constitutional principles and actively use international human rights mechanisms. To prevent child, early, and forced marriage—and thereby protect and advance the human rights of girls—civil society organizations need stronger capacity to claim the rights enshrined in international human rights treaties and to create pressure for their translation into national law. Combating child marriage, as a multi-layered human rights violation, requires a multi-actor effort.
These two projects can also be seen as complementary. All of the knowledge and materials we have produced engage with one another, like sub-chapters under a shared heading. Our notebooks are filled with dozens of thematic strands—from how child marriage is represented in the media, to how it is affected by climate change, to how it impacts women with disabilities. As societies, technologies, and economies change, gender-based rights violations also diversify, which requires our work to remain holistic, consistent, and sustainable.
Could you elaborate a bit more on your work within the project “Strengthening Civil Society Organizations’ International Advocacy Capacity”? What have you done and what will you do during this period?
In this period, we designed a training program consisting of three workshops and a roadmap-building meeting for civil society organizations. The focus was clear: combating child marriage. When we announced the training call through our social media channels, we received 83 applications from 30 cities, 36 of which came from civil society organizations. This was well above our expectations. Applications came from associations, foundations, communities, municipalities, bar associations, public institutions, and individuals across Turkey—from Ankara, Adana, Hakkari, Istanbul, Konya, Adıyaman, Ağrı, Karaman, Van, Urfa, Edirne, Bursa, Tokat, Diyarbakır, Aydın, Gaziantep, Şırnak, Hatay, Kütahya, Mersin, Erzurum, Balıkesir, Niğde, Izmir, Eskişehir, Tekirdağ, Trabzon, Kayseri, Giresun, and Antalya. This high demand demonstrated that Flying Broom was seen as a trusted and well-followed organization. Among the applicants, 49 people successfully completed the workshops and received certificates, 25 of whom were representatives from civil society organizations in diverse fields.
Trainings that are frequently organized in civil society provide invaluable opportunities for continuous learning and knowledge exchange among staff, managers, and volunteers. As new topics, documents, and connections emerge daily in the field of rights, such gatherings help broaden perspectives and ensure a balance of knowledge among participants. Experienced activists and newcomers meet in these spaces, supporting one another. Intellectual labor thrives on collective thinking, bringing together rights-sensitive activists who are eager to work collaboratively.
The three-week, ten-hour training program was not only a space for acquiring technical knowledge for civil society practitioners from different cities and sectors, but also an environment to reflect on issues collectively, exchange different perspectives, and develop new insights grounded in field experiences.
The training aimed to strengthen international advocacy and lobbying capacities to prevent child, early, and forced marriage. It focused on four key legal frameworks: the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
The project’s theory of change was based on civil society organizations incorporating participation in these human rights monitoring mechanisms into their advocacy strategies; strengthening their capacity to submit reports to the treaty bodies and the UPR mechanism (thus also advancing evidence-based advocacy skills); and effectively using knowledge and tools to highlight the diverse causes and consequences of child marriage as intersecting forms of discrimination and multi-layered rights violations in times of multiple crises.
We have now completed the training phase. The next step is to develop a roadmap for stronger dialogue with international human rights mechanisms.