Join on WhatsApp
Join on Telegram
Rabat – With recent data indicating worrying trends of child marriage that are being exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, UNICEF is turning to the big screen to sensitize and call for urgent global actions against the dire trends depicted in various surveys and studies.
Child marriage generally refers to any formal marriage or informal union between a child under the age of 18 and an adult or another child. Due to entrenched gender equality worldwide, girls remain disproportionately impacted by this practice. Globally, the prevalence of child marriage among boys is just one sixth of that among girls. In some countries such as Niger or Bangladesh, girls as young as 7 or 8 are forcibly married to much older men.
The practice is denounced in a number of international conventions and agreements, where it is regarded as a violation of children’s rights. Increasingly, it has also been recognised as “a key roadblock” to global health, development, and gender equality.
Today, child marriage is firmly inscribed on the global development agenda, mainly through its inclusion in the Sustainable Development Goals (Target 5.3) to be achieved by 2030. However, as shown by latest trends and future prospects, no region in the world is on track to achieve this goal.
Global context
While the prevalence of child marriage has decreased globally, from 1 in 4 girls married a decade ago to approximately 1 in 5 today, the practice still remains widespread. An estimated 650 million girls and women alive today were married as children, while 12 million underage girls are reported to get married every year.
If present trends continue, more than 140 million female children are predicted to be married in the next decade, with COVID-19 presenting a threat to progress against child marriage. Up to 10 million more girls will be at risk of becoming child brides as a result of the pandemic, alerts UNICEF.
Child marriage happens most in developing countries, where 1 in 3 girls is married before age 18, and 1 in 5 girls is married before age 15. South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa regions account for the largest number of women married as children.
An estimated 37% of young women alive today in sub-Saharan Africa were married under 18. Niger records the highest number of girl brides with 76%, followed by the Central African Republic with 68%, and Chad with 67%.
However, recent data also show high rates in previously understudied geographies like Latin America and the Caribbean. In this part of the world, an estimated 25% of girls are wed before age 18. The practice has seen no decline over the past decade in contrast to South Asia, where levels of child marriage have dropped from nearly 50% to 30% over the same period.
Girl child marriage is also increasingly documented in high-income countries like the United States, where it was recently described as “a hidden crisis” and “an outrage.” A report titled United States’ Child Marriage Problem, released last April by Unchained At Last, revealed poorly known facts about the issue.
About 300,000 children with a few as young as 10 were married in the US between 2000 and 2018. The report highlights that 86% of the victims are girls being wed to adult men through legal pathways.
Reading through the report, we also learn that child marriage is still legal in 44 US states, and it’s only in recent years that the remaining six states – Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Rhode Island and New York – banned the practice and eliminated all exceptions.
Presently, 20 US states require no minimum age for marriage, with a parental or judicial waiver. Indeed, oddly jogging our memory about Article 475 of the Moroccan penal code amended in 2014, the report reveals that most US legal frameworks view child marriage as “a valid defense” to statutory rape: when one of the parties to sexual activity is below the age of consent. Meaning, rapists are exempted from the charges related to their crime if proven to have been married to their victim at the time of the intercourse.
Regional and local contexts
Regarding the prevalence of child marriage in the Middle East and North Africa, it is described to be near the global average. The practice is more common than in regions such as East Asia or Eastern Europe, and less recurrent than in sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia. In MENA countries, around 1 in 5 women is married under 18 and 1 in 25 women is married before 15.
While the prevalence of the practice dropped from 1 in 3 to 1 in 5 child brides over the past 25 years, progress appears to have stalled in the past decade. An estimated 700,000 child brides were recorded in recent years. Today, the region is reported by UNICEF to be home to 40 million child brides: 30 million who married between age 15 and 18, and 9 million before age 15.
According to the same source, the occurrence of child marriage varies widely within the region, from a high of 1 in 3 in Sudan and Yemen, to a low of 1 in 50 in Tunisia (despite the fact that in Tunisia the legal age for marriage is set at 17). The report places Morocco in 6th place – right after Iran, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, and Sudan – in terms of the pervasiveness of the practice. 16% of Moroccan women aged 20 to 24 years alive today were married or in union before age 18, and 3% before age 15.
However, available data on child marriage in Morocco remain an “imperfect approximation,” explains another UN regional study. The reasons for this gap in evidence appear to be the lack of coordination between ministries, civil society, and international agencies regarding the research methods to adopt in order to collect data on the phenomenon, thus making available findings “disparate.” Adding to that is a dearth of national studies on the subject.
In fact, the most recent nationally representative survey on the issue in Morocco was the Population and Family Health Survey conducted in 2010-2011. It found that in 2011, 18.7% of women aged 20-49 in Morocco married before the age of 18, while 2.6% of women aged 15-49 married before age 15. However, it did not report the percentage of all women aged 20 to 24 who married before the ages of 15 and 18, which are the global standard indicators to estimate trends in child marriage over time.
The study also stressed how the high occurrence of customary law marriages in Morocco makes it difficult to provide accurate data on child marriage in the kingdom. Available data on the practice has been mainly supplemented by the communication of the number of legally registered underage marriages every year. In this regard, 13,335 child marriage requests were granted legal permission in 2020.
As a matter of fact, despite the outlawing of the practice in 2004 as part of a reform in the family code or Moudawana, the rate of child marriage has been gradually increasing in Morocco (except a slight drop of 1% in 2012).
The effects of child marriage on girls and beyond
Actors engaged in the fight against child marriage agree on how this phenomenon “effectively ends a girl’s childhood.” It interrupts her schooling, limiting her opportunities for career and vocational advancement. It places her at increased risk of domestic violence, and increases her isolation from family and friends, taking a heavy toll on her psychological well-being. Moreover, it puts her at risk for early, frequent, and high-risk pregnancies.
Numerous studies and NGO reports have documented the severe consequences of early pregnancies on adolescent girls. According to the World Health Organization (WTO), complications during pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death for 15-19-year-old girls globally. Relatedly, girls under 15 are reported to be five times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their 20s.
Besides, NGOs active in the fight against child marriage point to the links between child marriage and HIV. The International Women’s Health Coalition explains that given their limited power to negotiate safe sex or to access sexual and reproductive health services, child brides are at a higher risk of contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.
On this interlinkage, Girls not brides elaborates on how being exposed to frequent unprotected sexual activity, often because of pressure to prove their fertility, and having older and more sexually experienced husbands increases the risk of young married girls acquiring HIV.
The “devastating” consequences of child marriage are proven to reach far beyond the girls themselves. As such, children of child brides seem to be 60% more likely to die in the first year of life than those born to mothers older than 19, and families of child brides are gauged to be more likely poor and unhealthy.
Ultimately, because child marriage impacts a girl’s health, future and family, UNICEF reports, it imposes seizable economic costs nationally, with weighty implications for development and prosperity.
