UN Women is the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. A global champion for women and girls, UN Women was established to accelerate progress on meeting their needs worldwide. In Pakistan, UN Women has actively fought against the practice of child marriage.

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To motivate lawmakers to pass a bill protecting children from child marriage, UN Women chose to target leaders with a direct mail campaign. Members of the National Assembly of Pakistan received an invitation to a fictional child's wedding. Through a wedding card that would suit a child's wedding, designed entirely by children.

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We invited dozens of young girls, ranging in age from 5 to 15, from all socio-economic backgrounds, and asked them to freely draw and sketch. One of the girls was even an actual child bride that contributed.

 

We then took a number of the designs and sketches and combined them to form six chosen wedding cards, each reflecting a different area of the country. These were then dispatched directly to Members of the National Assembly, and other leaders and influencers in the country. A short film explaining the idea accompanied by social posts was also launched.

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We succeeded in reaching our target audience, receiving an almost immediate response from Members of Parliament, who chose to give statements holding the wedding cards, and asking other lawmakers to join them in the fight against child marriages.

 

More than a dozen lawmakers have so far joined our cause. In a session at the National Assembly of Pakistan, leaders held up the Child Wedding Cards to demand a law be put into place to raise the minimum marriageable age to 18.