“Colombian lawmakers have approved a bill to eradicate child marriage in the South American country after 17 years of campaigning by advocacy groups and eight failed attempts to push legislation through the house and senate.”
From The Guardian.
01 / 05
Colombia Outlaws Child Marriage After 17-Year Campaign
“For the first time since child marriage was banned in Sierra Leone two years ago, people accused of committing the crime have been brought to trial.
Four men appeared at a High Court on Friday in the capital city, Freetown, charged with the forcible marriage of a 17-year-old girl…
The president of the all-female lawyers' group, Legal Access through Women Yearning for Equality Rights and Social Justice, told the BBC she felt 'extremely happy'.
Menisa Sesay said it showed the legal reforms for which they had fought so hard were finally being enforced, vindicating their mission to protect the rights of vulnerable women and girls.”
From BBC.
Economic Times | Child Abuse & Bullying
India Records Progress Against Child Marriage, Gender Violence
“Even as India recorded a continued decline in child marriage, data from the National Family Health Survey-6 (NFHS-6) for 2023-24 revealed that 20.1% of women aged 20-24 were married before turning 18, the legal age of marriage for women. The figure has fallen by just over three percentage points from 23.3% reported in NFHS-5 (2019-21), according to Times of India report.
Among men aged 25-29, 15.9% had married before the legal age of 21 years, reflecting a 17.7% decline compared with the previous survey period.
The survey also pointed to a reduction in gender-based violence. The share of married women aged 18-49 who reported experiencing spousal violence dropped from 29.2% in 2019-21 to 22.3% in 2023-24. However, the burden remained disproportionately higher in rural areas, where 24.4% of women reported such experiences, compared with 17.5% in urban India. In the previous survey, the corresponding figures were 31.6% for rural women and 24.2% for urban women.
Child marriage among women has steadily declined across successive NFHS rounds. The prevalence stood at 47.4% in 2005-06 (NFHS-3), fell to 26.8% in 2015-16 (NFHS-4), and has now reduced to 20.1% in 2023-24.”
From Economic Times.
“Pakistan’s Punjab provincial assembly this week passed a new law banning marriage under the age of 18 for both boys and girls, introducing tougher penalties for child marriage, child trafficking and abuse linked to underage unions.
The Punjab Child Marriage Restraint Bill 2026 replaces older legislation dating back to 1929 and makes child marriage-related offenses cognizable, non-bailable and non-compoundable.
Pakistan has one of the highest rates of child marriage in South Asia, particularly in rural and low-income communities, with rights organizations warning that early marriage exposes girls to higher risks of domestic violence, school dropouts, early pregnancies and long-term health complications.
Sindh was the first province in Pakistan to set the minimum marriage age at 18 for both boys and girls through legislation passed in 2013, while other provinces have largely retained older legal frameworks setting the minimum age for girls at 16.”
From Arab News.
“An educational programme for young girls in northern Nigeria that involved local religious leaders massively reduced the number of child marriages, a study reported in Nature today has found…
In the first year of the programme, out-of-school girls were offered accelerated learning in reading, mathematics, life skills and business skills in ‘safe spaces’ dedicated to them. In the second year, the emphasis was on ensuring that the girls return to school. Parents were helped with the costs of school fees and uniforms, and girls continued to have access to tutoring and mentoring in the safe spaces, which were like after-school clubs. Those who did not return to school were offered vocational training to work in local shops.
What is new about this approach is that the researchers tested its effectiveness in a randomized control trial. The researchers enrolled 1,181 adolescent girls from 18 communities in the states of Borno, Kaduna and Kano who were both out of school and unmarried at the start of the programme. The communities were divided into nine pairs: one community of each pair participated in the programme while the other did not. The involvement of local leaders helped the programme to recruit almost all of the girls that met the inclusion criteria in each community, Abubakar says.
The trial took place between 2018 and 2020, and participants were surveyed at the beginning and at the end of the programme. By the final survey, 79% of the girls participating in the programme were still unmarried, versus about 14% in the group that did not participate. This corresponds to an 80% decrease in the likelihood of marriage during the study period, the researchers say.”
From Nature.