Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you so much for the question. You're right: it's challenging because some of these practices are long-held. In fact, their roots are in what is obviously misguided but intended to be protection of the girl. By marrying her, somehow you're keeping her safe from other potentially worse fates.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you for your intervention. I couldn't agree more. I'll start off by saying that one of our key modes of intervention, especially for the most marginalized girls, is actually to work with men and boys, and to work with what is often male customary and traditional leadership at the village level, because they are the key game changers in terms of changing attitudes and changing practices.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much for the question. I think there are two key missing pieces here. The first is a huge demand for reproductive health commodities that is unmet. There are currently 221 million women who would like access to contraception and do not have it. Part of this is a very concrete, easily solved problem of providing those commodities.

Foreign Affairs committee  I think this is a vital issue for parliamentarians to address because what we've found is that in many countries the biggest challenge is a legal challenge to whether this can be part of an education curriculum in a country. We advocate strongly for the fact that comprehensive sexuality education needs to be part of a high school curriculum and in fact a whole school curriculum with age-appropriate information being provided at every stage of education.

Foreign Affairs committee  Honourable members, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. Right now as I speak to you, a young girl of perhaps no more than 10 or 11, poor, most likely living in a remote rural area, is being forced to leave the only home she has ever known. She's frightened, confused, and above all powerless to stop the transaction taking place: her marriage to a much older man, a complete stranger.