Advocates and child marriage survivors in Boston gather to call for an end to child marriage. Currently more than two dozen U.S. states allow for marriage under the age of 18 under certain circumstances. A new bill up for debate in Congress calls for a national ban.
Joseph Prezioso/AFP/via Getty Images
hide caption
Our team of global health reporters has covered child marriage –- when one partner is under age 18. The United Nations calls it a "human rights violation," citing a litany of concerns for child brides: "early pregnancy and social isolation, interrupting her schooling, limiting her opportunities for career and vocational advancement and placing her at risk of domestic violence." Yet every year, the U.N. estimates that 12 million girls become child brides.
Child grooms, the U.N. further notes, may be forced into "an adult role for which they are unprepared," with pressure to drop out of school and support a family.
The U.N. has set the goal of ending child marriage by the year 2030.
This year there are new efforts to make child marriage illegal — a bill introduced by U.S. legislators in July and a resolution adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on September 4 establishes November 27 as the International Day to End Child, Early and Forced Marriage. As part of our "Whatever happened to …" series, we asked contributor Kamala Thiagarajan to examine the ongoing effort to end this practice.
Over the next week, we'll be looking back at some of our past global health and development stories to see "whatever happened to …"
Nations around the world are seeking to meet the U.N. goal of ending child marriage by 2030.
Since 2021, countries as diverse as Sierra Leone, England, the Philippines and the Dominican Republic have been passing legislation to set the marriage age at 18, with no exceptions.
In the United States, the current push for a national law is controversial — some have criticized provisions in the proposed legislation, and others oppose it altogether.
And legislation is not necessarily the solution. In India, marriage under age 18 is illegal, yet the latest National Family Health Survey conducted in country found that one in five women ages 20 to 24 married before turning 18. UNICEF estimates that at least 1.5 million girls under the age of 18 are married in India each year.
On July 16, U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin and Sens. Dick Durbin, Brian Schatz and Kirsten Gillibrand introduced the Child Marriage Prevention Act, a federal bill aimed at combating child marriage.
This legislation would push states toward a nationwide minimum marriage age of 18. "In 34 states, including Wisconsin, child marriage is legal. Many of these marriages are between young girls and adult men. It's time we end this predatory practice," Moore said in a statement emailed to NPR. "I know that advocates have pushed for reform at the state level, which has led some states to change their laws. This federal legislation would help bolster and support those efforts, including helping states get the data to understand its prevalence in their jurisdictions and then take action to address it."
In announcing the bill, its four congressional cosponsors cited data showing that more than 314,000 minors were legally married in the United States between 2000 and 2021, including girls as young as 10. The figures, compiled by child-marriage advocacy groups from state marriage records, indicate that most of the underage girls were married to adult men.
Unchained At Last, a nonprofit worked to end forced and child marriage in the U.S., estimates that at least 66,415 of these marriages — about one in five — occurred when the bride was at an age when sexual relations would be considered a crime (the age varies from 14 to 18 depending on the state). In roughly 90% of that subset, according to the organization's founder, Fraidy Reiss, marital exemptions in state statutory-rape laws shielded the adult spouse from prosecution. Married minors may also face legal barriers to hiring an attorney, filing for divorce or obtaining protection from abuse.
The Tahirih Justice Center, an organization with a long history of advocating for survivors of forced and child marriage, has been a key partner in developing and supporting this legislation.
