Challenges and strategies to end child marriage.

Abstract

Child marriage is one of the most important challenges of the current era that threatens women's health and violates human rights. The present study aimed to systematically review studies evaluating the challenges and strategies to overcome child marriage. Medical databases (CINAHL, EMBASE, MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, SCOPUS, Web of Science, ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health Source, and Social Science Research Network, as databases for English studies and IranMedex, Google Scholar, SID, Magiran, and Iran Doc as databases for Persian studies) were systematically searched from January 2010 to February 2020. To better identify appropriate studies, reference lists of relevant studies were searched. All potentially relevant abstracts and full-text were screened by two independent reviewers. Disagreements between two reviewers that could not be resolved were resolved via arbitration or consultation of a third author. From 225 articles included in this review, 16 research articles met our inclusion criteria. Most of the articles were dedicated to negative health outcomes related to child marriage. Ten studies addressed the program of overcoming the Child marriage and six studies reported challenges of it. Although, many studies have shown the efficacy of strategies to decline Child marriage. On the basis of the available evidence, it seems there are a number of obstacles to end Child marriage. To delineate the most effective strategy to end Child marriage is required further research.