700 million women alive today were married in childhood. Every year 15 million girls are married before they turn 18. 1 in 3 girls, in the emerging world.
On September 25th 2015, the United Nations approved the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): 17 objectives with the mission of ending poverty, protecting the planet and ensuring prosperity for all. Within this new development agenda for 2030, Goal #5 on Gender Equality makes an explicit mention to "child, early or forced marriage". What has the world done so far to address this issue, and why is it so difficult to fight against it?
Several institutional difficulties threaten the effective implementation of bans on child marriage: a lack of awareness on the part of officials and citizens on the existence of these laws, absence of birth and marriage registration, and the fact that law enforcement itself is undermined in several countries by religious law.
Poverty and education are two central factors as well, as girls in poor families are almost twice as likely to marry before 18 as a solution to their condition, and more educated girls are less likely to marry at an early age.
According to the World Bank, every year 15 million girls are married before they turn 18, 1 in 3 girls in the emerging world. There is also an economic impact of child marriage, which for the example of Niger is estimated at $25 billion dollars between today and 2030.
During the past years, some countries have made actual changes, at least as formal attempts, in particular in countries where child marriage is a more present reality. Some examples: Afghanistan's National Action Plan to Eliminate Early and Child Marriage (2014), Bangladesh's Advancement of Promoting Women's Rights (2012), and India's National Strategy on Prevention of Child Marriage (2013).
In 2015, the UN Human Rights Council adopted its first substantive resolution on child marriage, which recognized it as a human rights violation and called for more efforts to end this practice. The US Congress passed in 2013, after a long legislative back and forth, the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act which included provisions to prioritize the reduction of child marriage internationally.
Despite these efforts, the battle against child marriage promises to continue into the future. This practice is still alarmingly extended in specific regions. Unicefʼs latest figures show it is most prevalent in Niger, Central African Republic, Chad and Bangladesh; and it affects many more countries in East and South Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. According to a 2016 report, almost half of all child brides worldwide live in South Asia, and 1 in 3 are in India.
Since child marriage is deep into several societies and viewed as a means towards a more promising future for young girls, it is all the more urgent to work on their economic conditions to attack one main source of the problem. The fact that child marriage was included in the SDGs should reinforce it in the international agenda, and increase pressure at the national and local levels.
The civil society partnership Girls Not Brides suggests that legislation enforcing a minimum age of marriage of 18 years – with no exceptions, such as parental or state authorization – is one of the key legislative paths. Pakistan's Provincial legislation on age of marriage in 2013 and 2015 follows this path. The legal age of marriage in Niger, for example, is 15, although new laws have been proposed to change this.