Inter Press Service: E.U. Urged to Ban Early & Forced Child Marriages
Rangita de Silva de Alwis, associate dean of international affairs at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and adviser to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals Fund

“Something historic was initiated at the European Development Days (EDD) in early June: the EDD placed women and girls at the forefront of Sustainable Development. … The [draft resolution] was unique in the way in which it called on the European Union, in the context of its foreign policy and its development cooperation policy, to offer a strategic pact to its partners and to that end require that all its partner countries prohibit early and forced marriage in law and practice. … The E.U. has a critical role to play in influencing policy reform both in the E.U. member states and outside…” (6/22).