Elizabeth Meske is a practicing attorney in Minneapolis and Chairs the Minnesota State Bar Association's Human Rights Committee.  Liz is a frequent presenter and has spoken at the Minnesota Department of Human Rights' annnual symposium on human rights on numerous occassions.  Liz has an undergraduate degree in Human Rights and Justice from the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities and a law degree from William Mitchell College of Law, now Mitchell Hamline School of Law.  During law school, Liz served as a Benjamin B. Ferencz Fellow in Human Rights and Law and spent time studying law and human rights in Israel. Liz now serves as a Policy Associate with World Without Genocide.

Nearly 250,000 underage girls in the US were married between 2000 and 2010. Many child marriages occur to avoid prosecution on charges of statutory rape or to protect rapists. At a global level, at least 700,000,000 women in the world today were married as children.  The physical, psychological, economic, and social effects of these marriages are devastating and often result in poverty, abuse, illness, divorce.