A/HRC/41/19 31. Surveys conducted by UNICEF and the International Center for Research on Women found that limited funding was a key barrier to effectively addressing child marriage, particularly when the issue was not given priority in national policies. In the Sudan, for instance, scarcity of funding led to situations where service providers could attend to only one third of survivors’ requests for protection and services. 29 32. Additionally, funding shortages constitute significant barriers in the monitoring and evaluation of programmes to eradicate child, early and forced marriage. Reports have consistently recommended greater investment in programmes, including those aimed at assessing the effectiveness of educational measures, with a focus on grass-roots initiatives. Increased investment in monitoring and evaluation could facilitate ongoing learning and help inform future initiatives, including in humanitarian settings, where evidence is often anecdotal and unreliable.30 VI. Measures to prevent and eliminate child, early and forced marriage in humanitarian settings: promising practices 33. In emergencies and crisis contexts, harmful practices such as child, early and forced marriage are predictable and preventable. Child marriage is a cross-cutting issue that requires coordinated action by various actors across multiple sectors from the earliest stages of crises. The establishment of frameworks to address child marriage within emergency management systems and structures has been identified as a promising practice. That includes measures both to address the risk factors for child marriage and to provide support services for married girls and women. States and humanitarian actors should consider providing safe spaces, together with life skills and other economic empowerment programmes. They should also provide access to comprehensive health information and services, with adequate provision of and referral pathways to sexual and reproductive health services and psychosocial counselling. In host countries, such measures may include legal support and access to the asylum-seeking process. As Girls Not Brides mentioned in its submission, girls’ safety has been promoted at water points, latrines and changing rooms in refugee camps. A number of promising ways to ensure prevention and risk mitigation and to strengthen protection systems against child marriage in such contexts were also identified. 1. Framing the issue and adopting culturally sensitive and contextsensitive approaches 34. In humanitarian contexts, negative social behaviours are frequently exacerbated or altered. It is a complex matter to change social norms and beliefs around the roles of girls and women being confined to family and reproduction or to change concepts of honour tied to girls’ sexuality. Programmes aimed at addressing social norms should be evidence-based and contextualized (A/HRC/35/5, para. 28). Humanitarian responses should promote gender-transformative actions. 35. Interventions should be aimed at reinforcing human rights and enabling practising communities to collectively explore and agree upon alternative ways to fulfil their values without causing harm and violating the human rights of women and children, and they should help eliminate the practice in a more sustainable manner. 31 Framing the issue of child marriage and related interventions according to social and political sensitivities in each context has proved essential to gaining community support and overcoming barriers to 29 30 31 10 UNICEF in collaboration with the International Center for Research on Women, Child Marriage in the Middle East and North Africa (UNICEF, 2017), p. 61. See A/HRC/26/22 and Corr.1; A/HRC/35/5, para. 47 (d); A/73/257, para. 55 (n); UNICEF, Child Marriage in the Middle East and North Africa; and Girls Not Brides, “Child marriage in humanitarian settings”. See joint general recommendation No. 31 of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women/general comment No. 18 of the Committee on the Rights of the Child.