The National Coalition for Women against HIV/AIDS has made great efforts to fight Harmful traditional practices (HTPs) in general and early marriage in particular in Ethiopia.

Early marriage is prevalent and continues to place significant girls at risk in Amhara, Benishangul-Gumuz and Tigray Regional States. Hence the Coalition has been engaged in organizing various anti-early marriage utilizing social mobilizations, advocacy, and education in order to prevent girls from early marriage. The mechanisms used by the Coalition are envisioned to play a critical role in bringing about behavioral changes in communities throughout these regions and in the country as a whole. The Coalition believes that in order to eliminate Harmful Traditional Practices such as early marriage all segments of the society must take ownership of the problem and be responsible for the changes.

Based on this assumption since the establishment of NCWH, the Coalition has launched the STOP early marriage campaign in Amhara and Tigray Regional States. Through these campaigns, the Coalition was able to channel its efforts to focus on all HTPs and particularly Early Marriage in these two regions. The objective of the campaign was to initiate a program in the three regions of Ethiopia to Stop Early Marriage through social mobilization activities. These campaigns are designed to empower communities to take ownership of this agenda. The coordination of the campaign was implemented within a decentralized system with strong technical assistance from the national level to monitor the progress and outcomes of the activities. The Coalition is committed to ensure that the momentum created by this campaign is sustained through various mechanisms since the consequences of early marriage in girls, their families and the entire community can affect them adversely.

To maximize impact, the Coalition identified ongoing activities for girls and linked this campaign to strengthen this project. In collaboration with women associations, youth associations, regional women affairs bureaus, health bureaus and regions the campaigns added value to existing activities as well as strengthen the objectives it set out to accomplish.