06/29/2026
On June 25th, Too Young to Wed co-sponsored and participated in “Children’s Rights in the Crimes Against Humanity Treaty: Strengthening Children’s Rights and Inclusive Justice” — a side event held on the margins of the UN Security Council Open Debate on Children and Armed Conflict.
The event, chaired by H.E. Ambassador Oliver Maes of Luxembourg, opened with a keynote address by Ms. Vanessa Frazier, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict. Co-sponsored by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the End Gender Apartheid Campaign, the Malala Fund, Save the Children, and member states, Luxembourg, Latvia, Liberia, and Mexico, the event brought together Member States, UN representatives, civil society organizations, and legal experts to examine how proposed amendments to the Draft Articles on Crimes Against Humanity can better reflect the lived experiences of children, particularly girls, in conflict and crisis.
The discussion focused on three critical proposals: the codification of age-based persecution, forced marriage, and gender apartheid as crimes against humanity, and what it would take to close the structural gaps in international law that continue to leave the most vulnerable children behind.
Too Young to Wed spoke about the situation of girls in Afghanistan - the Taliban’s systematic dismantling of girls’ education, the recent decree legalizing child marriage, and the devastating intergenerational consequences of a system designed to remove girls from public life entirely. Over the past five years, Too Young to Wed has worked across Afghanistan, providing girls with access to secondary education, psychosocial support, and livelihood assistance through our Parwana Program — primarily targeting single-mother-headed households whose daughters face the greatest risk of child marriage.