child marriage is a global issue and has devastating consequences all over the world. at least 80 million girls under 18 will be married by 2030. stopping it isn't easy. we believe that when we educate just one girl, that one girl can be able to change her community. and changing cultural practices is even harder.

in 2022, michelle obama, amal clooney and melinda french gates came together to announce a collaboration with the aim of ending child marriage. we've been invited to their first field trip together, and they've come to ludzi secondary school in malawi. when i was your age, there were people in my community that didn't think a girl like me, who didn't have money or wealth or connections, could do the things that i did. i even had my second—form teacher tell me that i shouldn't apply to the colleges i applied to because she didn't think i could get in. so i ignored herand i applied to princeton. i got in and i went to law school and became a lawyer.

and i've worked at a university, i've run an ngo, i've done all sorts of things. so i know that there are so many girls like all of us all over the world where people are underestimating them. they're telling us what we can't do. and i refuse... you know, i see my daughters in those girls. you know, we tend to think that poverty and people who are disadvantaged, it looks like a certain... it has a certain look. it's a. . . it's a corrugated roof. it's a...it�*s a mud hut. it's a... you know, it's a place without running water or sewage. but abuse and neglect and underinvestment can happen in some of the shiniest cities in the world. at the start of 2023, malawi was hit by one of the deadliest cyclones recorded. more than half a million were affected, fuelling an already entrenched poverty in the country. esnet was 14 years old when her house was destroyed by the cyclone.

there's no roof, is there? at 15, esnet faced the decision of choosing marriage or an education.

do you worry that you might be asked to get married again? these are all your sisters. esnet is the eldest of four girls to a single mum, chrissy.

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, the belief that women don't have choice and power over their own being. that's what's happening here. advancing girls�* education africa is a grassroots organisation that reaches girls across malawi. thank you so much. have a seat. their key aim is to develop access to education as a way to challenge cultural beliefs of child marriage that are often deep—rooted in remote and rural communities. what are the reasons and the causes for child marriage?

what are the conditions that lead to girls under the age of 18 getting married ? when you look at our context here in malawi, the major aspect is poverty, because... ..there could be a family has got so many children and the parents cannot just support them. what do they do? they force the girls to go get married, because they will be there, they will be independent. they'll be supported by their husband. but also, sometimes, they want the husband that have married this daughter to be supporting the family. so it goes round and round and round. so to challenge those traditional and cultural beliefs, it really takes time, because it deals with the mind. you know? also cultural practices, religion practices that really forces the young girls to be so much ready by the age of 12 or 13. you know? 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'll be able to break the cycle of poverty, because this girl be assured

she'll be able to transform her community. she can educate other girls, she'll be the role model. and whatever it is that she's getting, once she get an education, whether she will be employed somewhere, or she'll be an entrepreneur, definitely she will not be the very same person like the parents were. i went to visit one of the programmes age africa runs in the southern district of mulanje. chanting each week, girls here meet to conduct a peer—led class. so, chats is an after—school programme that empowers young girls in school to have that safe space where they discuss the issues that affects them most. some of these issues include teen pregnancy, sexual health, and child marriage.

yes? inaudible snaps. that's a great answer. before you came to this community and before you had these classes, what were your attitudes to early marriage? had you thought about it before? how did this class help change your attitudes? so it has taught me that we should, like, listen to friends with those... some people come with other ideas that will ruin your life, so you shouldn't take it to mind. i was thinking that when i'm going to reach form four, i'm going to get married. so form four is what age? 16. my mind was about to just see what really happened in the marriage. but when i came here, hear some effects of early marriages. then i changed my mind.

when a woman is not educated, a man take very good advantage of abusing them. so we just want to be the first generation to change that mindset of men. and i don't... ijust want to have a good family without being beaten, because the women are beaten by their men because theyjust think them, like, useless. but i don't want to be a useless woman. chanting the neno district in southern malawi is a remote, rural area where young girls have less readily available access to help. tamara is 13 years old, but lost both her parents before her 11th birthday and was sent to live with her grandmother. 12 million girls under 18 get married each year globally. last year, when tamara was 12, she found out that she was to become one of these girls,

as her grandmother had sold her to a man in his 20s. and how much money did he give your grandmother to marry you?

child marriage has been illegal in malawi since 2017, but there have been few prosecutions. 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, which means literally there's a van that goes out with lawyers, and we go out in a community and say to girls, "you know, these are your rights, "and if you need a lawyer for free to protect you, "that's what we are here to provide." this is actually the first time we've been able to reach this part of malawi. we are focusing on child marriage because we know this is a big problem in this part of malawi. we're going to try and meet with as many people as we can this afternoon, including in private sessions. but you can also call the women lawyers association of malawi any time byjust dialling 3081.

so the first thing was for malawi to change its law so it did say the right thing on paper, which they did. and the rate has gone down since then, but not enough. so giving people access to the courts, and this is what we do, is fight for girls' rights in the courtroom. that's going to be a big piece. but we're also not naive enough to think that that's the only piece. our main strategy is to use - the law to make sure that child marriage is eliminated. part of what we do is to organise mobile legal. clinics... in rural communities. in rural communities, i so remote communities, far from our offices, _ where there is little knowledge of what the law provides. so awareness is a crucial part of the work that we do. - these girls, i've talked - to many of them, they do have ambitions. it's not that they - want to get married. they have ambition. they're like, "oh, i see "madam so—so, she's a teacher. -

"i'd like to be like her." one year down the line, - she's got, she's in marriage and she has a baby. the other problem of having laws and enforcing them - is sometimes it drives - the practice underground. right. now, when it goes underground, it becomes very difficult - for one to actually know that it's happening and to do - something about it. so that could be the major i problem, that if the practice goes underground, then . we would have to come up with a different strategy now to deal with that. l but it's possible. chiefs, or village headmen, are the local leadership in rural communities across malawi. their leadership is essential for any meaningful change to happen with cases of child marriage such as tamara.

why do you think there's such a high number of girls under the age of 18 getting married in malawi? is there an issue that you're facing when parents want their children to get married, their girls to get married and you have to then intervene?

are there any marriages of girls that you know in this area, of girls under 18? but do you think child marriage is a problem?

singing on radio radio presenter: hello, hello, and welcome to yet another- edition of a programme that stands as a platform for us beautiful girls to discuss issues affecting us and encourage one another to focus on our goals. in today's topic... radio outreach is one approach across malawi that aims to reach girls outside of the school network.

i went along to listen to one weekly session being recorded. i would like to know how many of us would like to get married someday, and why would you like to get married? lucy? cos most of the families we are coming from, parents are not able to take care of the children they have. for example, ifa certain family has a girl... is to send that girl into a marriage so that they can get something from the man. mostly young girls here in malawi get married at a tender age and to someone who is much older than theirage. so poverty is another reason why forced and early marriage happens here in malawi, especially in our communities. remember, you can send your comments, views or questions on... i wanted to speak with lucy after the show to ask her how attitudes, especially with older males, have been moved by the show. my father would say, "i can't spend my money. "i can't waste my money

for a girl to go to school," just because he was seeing other girls in the same community who their fathers work tirelessly for them to go to school. but, at the end of the day, they ended up pregnant and getting married. yeah. so he is totally different from my mum. are those some of the attitudes that your radio programme is trying to challenge? yeah, i try to. yeah, cos this is one reason why i created this group at my village. most of the decisions or most of the ideas are run by men. so women have no voices in most of the malawian communities, especially from the communities we are coming from. so this particular patriarchal system can also be challenged using these radio programmes. so you want to bring men onto the table as well? mm—hm! yeah, we need to, we need to "hey, men, come, see, "come and hear what is being discussed here.

"what's your ideas? "ok, with this and this, we can make these things "to work." yeah. the rates are coming down when real work gets done. it's, it's really a social norm problem. the only way to change social norms is at the community level. you get the community thinking differently about the girls. the radio show reaches four million listeners a week, many of whom meet at listening clubs each week for a new episode. jane has set up one of these groups in her village.

ulanda is headed to the first african global summit on child marriage that will be attended by michelle obama, amal clooney and melinda french gates. this is the very first time where, really, globalwomen are interacting

with local actors. it's really the first of its kind right here in africa. the best outcome would be really to support local actors, and also, as local actors, it's giving us more energy to go back home and be able to refocus and put more energies to make sure that we are winning the battle in the next generation. the world women leaders and men that are here, i would say that we are leaders in our own spaces. whether at global, national or local level, we can do something. we can change this. one of the districts in malawi, almost 7,000 young girls got pregnant within the period of six months. now, think about this — 7000—plus girls are now mothers. and it's so heartbreaking. when all the international communities left the communities, we were there to support the young girls so that they accessed

education. age africa was there, working in the community, directly touching the lives of girls, distributing learning materials and supplies just to make sure that girls are protected. the fight for real change is littered with obstacles for grassroots organisations like ulanda's. and even with the support of big global interventions, cultural practices and poverty will be a big uphill battle to overcome. if we just put ourselves in those girls�* shoes and think of how would we feel if it were us or our daughters that were married off at the age of 12 or ten? any of us would be outraged at the thought, and if it were our children or grandchildren, we would move heaven and earth. so, let's... we can't pretend like we don't know. and that's why we're here, because we want to make sure that people are aware that this is an issue that's going on every single day.

in malawi, 13—year—old tamara has safely given birth, and herfocus now is how to be a single mother to her baby boy.

hello there. it's going to be quite a mixed bag for us this weekend. not a wash—out. there will be some sunshine at times, but that's going to come in between two spells of rain that are coming in from the atlantic. atlantic, that means it's going to be mild, but saturday looks like it could be quite windy for many places. now, one part of the country sensitive to more rain is dorset, where we've got a number of flood warnings already and there could be 20—30 millimetres of rain here.

you can keep up to date with the flood warnings online. we could see the risk of flooding increasing this weekend with more rain moving in. and this is the rain that's heading in at the moment from the southwest. we've got this rain still across scotland leftover from earlier on that is moving northwards. allowing that rain to come in from the southwest and usher in some milderair as well as some stronger winds as well. so for many parts, it's going to be a wet start. and because of that, we're looking at a mild start to saturday, no frost this time. you can see the extent of the rain across england and wales and northern ireland. it's going to move northwards and eastwards. could be quite heavy for a while. for england and wales, we should eventually see some sunshine coming in from the west. the odd shower but rain could return to northern ireland, and it looks quite cloudy for scotland with some rain from time to time. mild though temperatures 8—9 in scotland to a high of 1a in the southeast with some late sunshine. it's going to turn quite windy through the day, though, across england and wales

and northern ireland, gales quite widely, and around some irish sea coasts the winds could be gusting 60—70 miles an hour. now, those winds will tend to ease overnight and the rain will continue for a while across scotland and northern england. and then as that move through, we've got the next band of rain just approaching the far southwest by sunday morning. again, it should be frost free temperatures, six oi’ seven degrees. and it's almost a repeat performance, really, on sunday. this band of rain moves in a little later, but it's not going to be quite as heavy. shouldn't last as long. and again, we'll get some sunshine coming in after the rain for england and wales. more rain returns to northern ireland and still cloud and patchy rain left over in scotland. temperatures not quite so high, but it's probably not going to be quite as windy. should be a reasonably mild start to next week. there's still some rain around from time to time. it does turn drier as the week goes on, but it does turn a little chillier.

live from washington, this is bbc news. gridlock on capitol hill stalls crucial military aid for ukraine and israel amid a fight over the us—mexico border. i will not go back to south carolina and try to explain why i helped ukraine, taiwan and israel, and did nothing to secure our own border. plus, divergent world views on the republican debate stage

underscore a larger intra—party fight over theirfuture. and how will these disagreements in the us play out around the globe? i'm helena humphrey. good to have you with us. there once was a time when the us republican party was synonymous with oftentimes hawkish foreign policy: a muscular defense abroad meant peace at home — or so the argument went. just last month, the world lost a long—running proponent of a strong us foreign policy, with the passing of former secretary of state henry kissinger. for decades american boots could be found on the ground in far—away wars — and with that came the influence that republicans in washington wanted. but times are changing. while the trump era was tough on china, it was also characterized by a more isolationist approach. and now, with the 2024, presidential election just