Parents – especially in humanitarian crises – often view marriage as a way to protect their daughters from sexual violence. In places where the groom’s family pays a bride price, parents in difficult circumstances may marry off their daughters as a source of income. In places where the bride’s family pays a dowry to the groom’s family, younger brides typically command smaller dowries, creating an incentive for parents to marry their daughters off early. This may be the case when parents face economic hardships or when girls are forced by poverty or circumstance to drop out of school. Impoverished parents often believe marriage will secure a daughter’s future by making a husband or his family responsible for her care. But for millions of people, child marriage can seem like the best – or only – option.ĭaughters are frequently seen as burdens or commodities because of pervasive gender inequality. It can be hard to imagine why someone would choose to have their child married off.
Regardless of these varying definitions, child marriage is a serious human rights violation that directly threatens lives, health, safety and education of girls and boys, limiting their future prospects. Multiple Indicators Cluster Surveys and Demographic and Health Surveys, for example, collect information on the date and age at which women and men were married or first started living with their first spouses or partners. Major surveys try to account for this variation when measuring child marriage. In countries where polygamous marriage is not permitted by civil law, second and third marriages often take place without formal registration. In many parts of the world, for example, marriages may be recognized by the community without legal registration, marked simply with a ceremony. The concept of marriage also varies – it can be formal or informal, governed by civil law, common law or religious law, or simply be a customary practice. And other countries have an older minimum age of marriage, such as Nepal, where the law requires both men and women be at least 20 when they marry.
(The CRC makes an exception for national laws recognizing an earlier age of majority.) Some countries and cultures consider adulthood a state achieved upon marriage – for example, countries where full age means the age of 18 years and above, and any married woman is deemed to be of full age, even if she is under 18. This is also the legal definition used in most parts of the world.īut in a small number of countries, adulthood, or the “age of majority” may be reached before age 18. The internationally recognized definition of a child – established by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), one of the most universally endorsed and widely ratified treaties in history – is “every human being below the age of 18 years”. Both the words “child” and “marriage” are sometimes interpreted differently.
Although this definition sounds straightforward, the realities of child marriage can be complicated. What does teen pregnancy have to do with child marriage? What is child marriage?Ĭhild marriage is a marriage or union in which one or both spouses are under 18 years old. What is the difference between child marriage, early marriage and forced marriage? Is it insensitive to interfere with other countries’ religious or cultural traditions around child marriage? What are the consequences of child marriage? What is the usual age difference between a child bride and her husband?Īre boys ever married off while still children? How old are the children involved in child marriages?