Where Child Marriage Is Still Common

An often overlooked form of violence against women is child marriage, which is considered a fundamental violation of human rights. The right to ‘free and full’ consent to marriage is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whereby it is widely agreed that consent cannot be ‘free and full’ when one of the parties involved is not sufficiently mature to make an informed decision about a life partner. According to UNICEF, child marriage often has long-lasting, mostly adverse effects on a girl’s development, including teen pregnancy, early exit from education and social isolation.

Globally, roughly one in five women aged 20 to 24 was married by the time she turned 18 and 4 percent were married before the age of 15. That’s according to the latest estimates from UNICEF, which found stark regional differences in the prevalence of child marriage. In Sub-Saharan Africa, almost one in three girls gets married or enters a cohabiting relationship before the age of 18. 9 percent of Sub-Saharan women who are now 20 to 24 years old even entered such a union before the age of 15. In South Asia, one in four young women were married by the age of 15, while it was one in five in Latin America and the Caribbean.

According to UNICEF, the term "child marriage" is used to refer to both formal marriages and informal unions in which a person lives with a partner for some time before 18 years old. Child marriage often takes place through an informal union, in which girls live with a partner rather than marry, oftentimes because laws prohibit an official union. Child marriage is tied to poverty, school dropouts, teenage pregnancy and violence.