Alissa Koski

Tropical cyclones (TCs) have had reported impacts on child marriage within certain communities, driven by disrupted livelihoods, displacement, and interruptions to education. However, the extent to which TCs affect national rates of child marriage has not been systematically studied. Here, we combine 12 888 607 person-years of nationally representative survey data on child marriage with high-resolution gridded wind speed data to estimate the effect of TCs on child marriage rates in 14 cyclone-exposed countries between 1983 and 2015. Using a distributed lag model, we estimate changes in child marriage rates up to three years following a cyclone. We find little measurable change in national child marriage rates after cyclones. We observe a small increase in the rate of child marriage in Mozambique, and subgroup analyses suggest that child marriage may have increased slightly among urban populations in Cambodia and Timor-Leste. Overall, these results indicate that, despite reported impacts, TCs are unlikely to be a dominant driver of child marriage rates globally.

Child marriage, defined as marriage before the age of 18, is a human rights concern and a form of gender-based violence. We co-produced a series of radio dramas with residents of Ibadan, Nigeria that addressed common justifications for child marriage and used a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the impact of the series on knowledge of and support for the practice. The drama series led to reductions in support for child marriage, though most respondents reported that their religion encourages marriage before the age of 18. Targeted, co-produced radio programming could be a promising, cost-effective means of addressing child marriage.

Floods affected an estimated 1.6 billion people worldwide over the past two decades, and their impacts are projected to increase with climate change and population growth. Emerging reports indicate that these events disrupt children’s education, a foundational determinant of lifelong health and economic outcomes, yet systematic cross-country evidence on the effects of floods on education remains limited. In this paper, we collate 2.8 million education records from 34 countries that experienced floods between 2000 and 2018 and link them to high-resolution flood footprints from the Global Flood Database to quantify the effects of flood exposure on schooling attainment. Exploiting the natural variation in exposure to flooding among people living in the city or neighbourhood, we use fixed-effects regression models to estimate the effect of flood exposure on the likelihood of receiving any formal schooling among children of school-enrolment age, adjusting for sex and wealth status. We find that exposure to floods at ages 5-6y corresponds to a 0.25 percentage-point increase (95% CI: 0.09-0.41) in the likelihood of having no formal education (a relative increase of 2.4%), with more pronounced effects among girls and children in the poorest household wealth quintile. This effect is comparable to other well-documented climate-related impacts on schooling, and our estimates are likely conservative. Across the 34 countries studied, we estimate that flooding prevented approximately 800,000 children from receiving any formal education between 2000 and 2018, 76% of whom were female. Our findings demonstrate that floods may be undermining global progress toward educational attainment and gender equality goals.

Background Violence against women is a global problem with serious consequences. In response, Peru established women’s emergency centres or Centros de Emergencia Mujer (CEMs) in 1999, offering support services like psychological and legal counselling for women suffering from violence. CEMs also implemented preventive activities such as educational programmes and community outreach to prevent domestic violence. This study aimed to assess the impact of CEMs on physical, psychological and sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) in Peru. Methods We conducted a secondary analysis of the Peru Demographic and Health Surveys’ domestic violence module, from 2004, the first year of available data, to 2016. We use a difference-in-differences approach with the Callaway and Sant'Anna estimator to account for the staggered introduction of CEMs across districts. Results Our findings showed that CEMs lead to an average increase of 3.00 percentage points (pp) (95% CI: 0.61 to 5.39) in the probability of reporting any form of physical, psychological or sexual IPV, primarily driven by psychological violence reporting (3.07 pp, 95 %CI: 0.60 to 5.55). Analyses of the effect of CEMs on physical and sexual violence were inconclusive but indicate that the CEMs did not have large impacts on these forms of violence. Discussion CEMs may have increased the reporting mainly of psychological IPV to the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS). This increase in psychological IPV could be due to heightened sensitisation, leading to more individuals reporting to the DHS than before, or to a rise in incidence stemming from unaddressed root causes of violence or potential backlash effects. Our results are inconclusive regarding the impact of CEMs in IPV incidence and highlight the need to refine CEM preventive services and adopt comprehensive strategies to combat and to measure the impact of interventions in IPV. Further research is essential to understand the complexities of IPV prevention and measurement to continuously monitor the progress of such interventions.

Child marriage is considered a human rights violation, and its elimination is an explicit target of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. However, there is growing concern that climate change may be threatening efforts to eliminate child marriage. We conducted a systematic review to synthesise quantitative research on the relationship between climate change and child marriage and assess the risk of bias across these studies. We identified 18 studies from an interdisciplinary range of databases. Several studies found that child marriage was correlated with droughts and floods. However, because of the high risk of bias across studies, differences in the vulnerability of the populations studied, and differences in the definitions of extreme weather used, we are unable to draw broad conclusions about whether extreme weather events increase or decrease the rate of child marriage. We discuss common biases across studies and provide suggestions for improving the strength of evidence on this topic.

Effective community entry processes influence community participation and acceptance of public health interventions. Though there is a growing body of literature on the importance of community partnerships, there is a lack of pragmatic and practical documentation of the experiences involved in the community entry process as it relates to culturally sensitive topics such as child marriage which can help to support researchers working in this field. This article highlights key themes related to knowledge of the community, effective communication, cultural sensitivity, coproduction and giving feedback which help to build trust between the community members and the research team. Institutional representation, not managing expectations, and lack of clarity, along with personal opinions of community gatekeepers can create challenges for the fostering of trustworthy relationships with the community. These realities must be actively addressed right at the onset of the process between the research team and community stakeholders. Researchers can develop trust, form connections and engage different communities by working with local groups and leaders, using culturally appropriate methods, and addressing community concerns. Future projects working with communities on child marriage in Nigeria and other countries would benefit from the reflections presented in this paper.

Context. Statutory rape laws establish the age of consent to sex and exceptions to that age. To date, statutory rape laws have rarely been examined in the United States, in part because no comprehensive database of the laws exists.Methods. We collected statutory rape laws to create a longitudinal database of the laws in place in each US state between 2000 and 2021. We coded three aspects of the laws: the age of consent to sex, close-in-age exceptions to the age of consent, and marital exemptions. We described those aspects of the laws and how they have changed over the last two decades.Results. In 2021, the age of consent varied between 16 (n = 32), 17 (n = 7), and 18 (n = 12) across states. Most states had exceptions to the age of consent for persons close-in-age (n = 39) and married couples (n = 39). From 2000 to 2021, one state increased its age of consent. Over the same period, two states removed close-in-age exceptions and four added them. Six states removed marital exemptions, while two instated them. Conclusions. Definitions of statutory rape and exceptions to the crime varied widely between states, but the laws have rarely changed in the past two decades. The variability in the laws across states raises important questions about how they should be structured. This database will facilitate research on the laws, which may provide a stronger empirical basis for future policies in this area.

Effective community entry processes influence community participation and acceptance of public health interventions. Though there is a growing body of literature on the importance of community partnerships, there is a lack of pragmatic and practical documentation of the experiences involved in the community entry process as it relates to culturally sensitive topics such as child marriage which can help to support researchers working in this field.This article highlights key themes related to knowledge of the community, effective communication, cultural sensitivity, coproduction, and giving feedback which help to build trust between the community members and the research team. Institutional representation, not managing expectations, and lack of clarity, along with personal opinions of community gatekeepers can create challenges for the fostering of trustworthy relationships with the community. These realities must be actively addressed right at the onset of the process between the research team and community stakeholders.Researchers can develop trust, form connections, and engage different communities by working with local groups and leaders, using culturally appropriate methods, and addressing community concerns. Future projects working with communities on child marriage in Nigeria and other countries would benefit from the reflections presented in this commentary.