Several organizations including Save the Children and the World Bank have compiled a new report on how child marriage laws around the world fail to protect girls from the many harms associated with early marriage. The report, titled “Ending Child Marriage: Child Marriage Laws and Their Limitations,” found that many countries have failed to ban marriages of children under the age of eighteen and that, even where there are legal limits on child marriage, girls are often married illegally. Additionally, child marriage laws often contain so many exceptions to the legal age limit, such as allowing younger girls to marry by parental, judicial or religious consent, that any ban on child marriage has limited effect.

According to the report, even allowing for legal exceptions to a country’s age limit on marriage, “at least 20,000 girls are likely to be married illegally each day.” Girls who marry early are more likely than adult women to suffer poor health outcomes, leave school early, live in poverty, and suffer from domestic violence, all of which deprive girls of their basic rights to health, education and safety. 

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) propose to eliminate child marriage by 2030. The new report argues that this goal will not be met without reforms that set the legal age for marriage at 18 years of age or higher and that eliminate any exception to the legal age limits. The report makes several other policy recommendations to reduce or eliminate child marriage, whether legal and illegal, including expanded access to “quality” education and other professional opportunities for women and girls. 

The organizations that contributed to the report are The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, The Global Partnership for Education, Save the Children, and The World Bank. The report is based on an analysis of research and data collected from 112 countries from 2015 to 2017. 

Compiled from: Wodon, Quentin; Tavares, Paula; Fiala, Oliver; Le Nestour, Alexis; and, Wise, Lisa, Ending Child Marriage: Child Marriage Laws and Their Limitations, The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, The Global Partnership for Education, Save the Children, and The World Bank (October 2017).