World: Guidance on Child Marriage: Programming for married girls and girls at risk of child marriage in forced displacement and crisis settings January 2026

Country: World Source: Plan International Please refer to the attached file. Introduction By the end of 2025, approximately 25 million girls (ages 0–17) are forcibly displaced.* Moreover, girls in fragile settings like forced displacement, are twice as likely to be married as a child than girls in stable settings.2 Forcibly displaced and stateless children face a range of protection risks, including sexual abuse, child marriage and other often compounding forms of exploitation and gender-based violence (GBV). Preventing, mitigating and responding to all forms of GBV and protecting children are core elements of UNHCR’s protection mandate. Child marriage is a child-specific form of GBV that mostly affects adolescent girls and is a common child protection risk, especially among communities affected by crisis and forced displacement. UNHCR identified child marriage as one of the top 10 child protection risks reported by UNHCR and its partners across operations globally.3 Every year, 12 million girls are at risk of being married before the age of 18.4 According to UNICEF, ten years ago, one in four young women aged 20 to 24 was married as a child. Today that number has fallen to one in five.5

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