For a special documentary as part of this year’s BBC 100 Women season, three of the world’s most high-profile humanitarians, Michelle Obama, Amal Clooney, and Melinda Gates, visited Malawi to meet the girls at risk from the global issue of child marriage, and some of the grassroots organizations trying to stop it.
12 Million Girls airs on BBC News channel from Saturday 9 December.
The visit follows a collaborative effort launched in 2022 by The Obama Foundation’s Girls Opportunity Alliance, the Gates Foundation, and the Clooney Foundation for Justice, aimed at ending child marriage.
Obama, attorney, author and one of the BBC 100 Women for 2023 said: “If we let one thing slip, it all just starts to unravel. In the United States we’re dealing with a rollback in reproductive rights, things that people thought they could take for granted… And a lot of it is because of the devaluation of women, and the belief that women don’t have choice and power over their own being. That’s what’s happening here.”
Ulanda Mtamba, Malawi’s country director for AGE Africa (Advancing Girls’ Education in Africa) and one of the BBC 100 Women for 2023 said: “We believe that when we educate just one girl, that one girl can be able to change her community and her society. By educating a girl we’d be able to break the cycle of poverty because this girl, be assured, will be able to transform her community, educate more girls and be a role model.”
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Amal Clooney, human rights lawyer and one of the BBC 100 Women for 2023 said: “What’s the point of having a beautiful constitution that protects girls from child marriage if the girls who are the victims of this don’t know about it. So, we formed a network of mobile legal aid clinics that go out in a community and say to girls these are your rights, and if you need a lawyer for free to protect you, that’s what we are here to provide.”
