As a key player in shaping global development priorities -- priorities that include education, health care, food security, economic empowerment and ending violence against women and girls -- the United States has an important role in ending early and forced marriage worldwide.

By Jennifer Abrahamson Like typical teenagers growing up in a big city, Priya and Talat are on a regular basis exposed to tantalizing possibility and...

Once again, I recently returned to my home base in Washington, DC after spending several weeks in Ethiopia's deeply poor, yet breathtaking, Amhara region. And once again I was inspired by the sheer enthusiasm and thirst for opportunity among an often forgotten group: child brides.

ICRW's Turning Point Campaign aims to draw attention to adolescence, when girls in particular are at a heightened risk of dropping out of school and child marriage.

Recently, I toured a health clinic in India and met a girl named Anju. Anju's family is poor. They live far away in a remote village that has no running water or health care. Although Anju is only 14, her parents expect her to marry and start having children soon.

We all want to bring every good thing to our children. My daughter and her friends want to have the power to choose a rewarding future for themselves. Girls in countries like Niger want the same thing.

Standards are in place to end violence and discrimination against women and girls. Governments must not be allowed to backtrack on their pledges.

UPDATED: March 8, 2013, 6:15 p.m. EST Humaiya, a 16-year-old from Bangladesh, hasn't yet worn the traditional wedding rituals such as kohl-painted...

Adolescent pregnancy is a universal issue that occurs for many different reasons. But in nine out of 10 cases in developing countries, where complications during pregnancy and childbirth are a leading cause of death, the young mother is already married.

If the debate in the West is why women can't have everything, the debate in the developing world is still why so many women don't have anything.

KINSHASA, Congo -- The United Nations Children's Fund says more than a quarter of Congolese children are not going to school, including 1.3 million in...

Before the end of the year, the lives of millions of girls in Sub-Saharan Africa will be transformed, in what many are calling the beginning of the end for child marriage.

Like many of the girls I spent time with in Ethiopia's Amhara region earlier this year, Yeshi-Alem knows about not having choices. She was forced to marry when she was 10-years-old. A few years later, she gave birth to a boy and dropped out of school.

Malala's plight has unleashed an unprecedented outpouring of public support. Now all of us must make that support count -- and deliver on the cause she has been fighting for -- her dream of education for every child.

International Day of the Girl is a day to recognize the rights of girls and to reflect on the unique hardships many of them face. It's also a day to honor their resilience and their capacity -- if given the right opportunities -- to make meaningful contributions to their communities.

Resources, leadership and long-term commitments are necessary to close persistent gender gaps and improve the rights and well-being of millions of girls around the world.

Who do you care about? Is it your sister, your niece, your daughter, your best friend? One girl--every girl. As a Teen Advisor to Girl Up, a campaign of the United Nations Foundation; as a 16-year-old girl myself; but most of all, as an older sister who would literally give my sister the world, I am calling on you to join our movement in the first International Day of the Girl Child on Oct. 11, 2012.