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 her and 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 corrugated roof. 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. 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. 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.

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. - i these girls, i've talked to manyl 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 in marriage - and she has a baby. the other problem of having laws and enforcing them _ is sometimes it— drives the practice underground. now, when it goes underground, it becomes very difficult for one i to actually know that it's happening and to do something about it. - so that could be the major problem, that if the practical goes underground, then we would have to come up with a different strategy - now to deal with that.

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 under18?

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? 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 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. 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 — 7,000—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.

good afternoon. we're about to say goodbye to 2023, and if that for you involves travel plans, you need to keep abreast of the weather forecast, because as we head into the weekend, there's further heavy rain to come, and snow is likely even at lower levels in the far north for a time and a risk of gales, particularly down to the south. it's this area of low pressure. it arrives during saturday, sweeps its way eastwards during the early hours of sunday and leaves a trail of showers to follow. we have seen some showers around today, chiefly across northern ireland and northern england and some making their way through wales, towards the midlands and the south east as we speak. they will continue for a time, but tend to fade a little

as we go through the night, and we'll have some clearing skies. still some showers and strong winds into the far north—east of scotland, but here's the first signs of that heavy rain out to the west. milder weather here, but it could be a bitterly cold, frosty, icy start in sheltered rural areas of scotland. dry and sunny to begin with, but then that cloud and rain will sweep its way steadily north and east. gales starting to pick up into the south—west with a spell of very heavy rain into south—west england, wales and north—west england as we go through the afternoon. it's likely to stay dry through the east midlands, east anglia and south—east england. here, 12 degrees the high. a cooler story with some wintry showers developing. as the temperatures fall away in scotland, at lower levels we could see further disruptive snow through saturday night into the early hours of new year's eve first thing on sunday morning. so here's that low. it will start to push away during sunday and then leave us in quite a showery regime. perhaps new year's eve

will be a slightly quieter story. there will be a rash of showers. there will be some strong, gusty winds down to the south, but those showers will tend to fade away as we go through the day. it certainly will be a slightly quieter story across much of scotland — six or seven degrees here. sunny spells and scattered showers with highs of eight to ten elsewhere. into new year's eve itself, if you are off out and about, it looks likely that it will be a cooler story with a few scattered showers around. the strongest of the winds as you see in the new year down to the south. then on new year's day and into tuesday, it will be a little bit quieter and a little bit cooler. take care.

live from london, this is bbc news. ukraine says at least 18 people have been killed in a wave of russian air strikes across the country. as more detail emerges about the attacks on a number of ukrainian cities, nato member poland says it believes a russian rocket crossed its airspace. israel expands its ground offensive into palestinian refugee camps in central gaza, forcing thousands to flee. the family of a "good samaritan" who died while helping a stranger in sheffield has paid tribute. chris marriott's family said he "devoted his life to helping others".

hello, i'm lucy hockings. russia has launched one of its biggest aerial attacks on ukraine since the war began, killing at least 18 people in a wave of deadly explosions across the country. president zelensky says 114 of 158 missiles and drones fired were shot down by ukrainian defences. ukraine's air force says it has "never seen so many locations targeted simultaneously". cities hit include kyiv, lviv in the west, 0desa in the south, and dnipro, kharkiv and zaporizhzhia in eastern ukraine. a maternity hospital and shopping mall were among buildings damaged and destroyed. meanwhile poland says an identified aerial object entered the nato country's airspace at hrubieszow overnight. a polish general says the object, which is likely to have been a russian missile, spent less than three minutes over polish territory, before returning to ukrainian territory. we'll get reaction from poland in a moment. from kyiv, our ukraine correspondent

james waterhouse reports.