The Challenge: Child Marriage is not Tradition, it's a Violation of Human Rights

Marriage before the age of 18 is a fundamental violation of human rights. Many factors interact to place a child at risk of marriage, including poverty, the perception that marriage will provide ‘protection’, family honor, social norms, customary or religious laws that condone the practice, an inadequate legislative framework and the state of a country’s civil registration system. While the practice is more common among girls than boys, it is a violation of rights regardless of sex. (Source: UNICEF).

Each year, 12 million girls – across countries, cultures and religions – are married before the age of 18. This practice violates girls’ rights to health, education and opportunity, exposes girls to violence throughout their lives and traps them in a cycle of poverty (Source: Girls Not Brides).

The Response: the CEFM Campaign

The Campaign to End Child, Early and Forced Marriage (CEFM) was launched in 2014. It seeks to empower parliamentarians to become leaders in the defense and promotion of the human rights of girls and women. This includes promoting an effective monitoring, funding and implementation of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5: To achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, particularly by addressing target 5.3 on ending all harmful practices such as child, early and forced marriage.

To achieve this goal, the CEFM Campaign pursues the following outcomes:

1. Encourage parliamentarians to effectively address child, early and forced marriage and early unions and include these issues as priorities in their parliamentary agendas.
2. Build political support to create an enabling legal and policy framework that:
   • Asserts the primacy of national laws over customary and religious laws;
   • Establishes 18 as the minimum legal age for marriage, uniformly for both boys and girls, with no exceptions;
   • Strengthens civil registration (births and marriages), health and education systems; and
   • Guarantees the enjoyment of sexual and reproductive health and rights, property rights and access to justice for all girls and women.