Child marriage violates the rights of the girl child to be free from all forms of discrimination, inhuman and degrading treatment, and slavery. This paper analyses the different legal frameworks and human rights dimensions of child marriage within a feminist perspective. The value of a rightsbased approach as a powerful advocacy tool to monitor child marriage is at the heart of this paper. Further, the paper highlights the interconnectivity between international human rights law, constitutional guarantees of gender equality, and other gender friendly laws in combating child marriage. The main thrust of this paper is that early marriage is a violation of fundamental human rights and that both state and non- state actors must be held accountable under international treaty obligations to combat early child marriage.
