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Despite legal and community awareness, one of the world’s most grave atrocities – child marriage – continues to impact millions of women and girls each year. Child marriage refers to any formal marriage or informal union between a child under the age of 18 and an adult or another child. This is a global issue, but the largest number of child brides live in the Asia Pacific region, while the highest prevalence rates are found in sub-Saharan Africa, specifically Niger.
As of 1994, child marriage is banned under several international agreements, ranging from the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women to the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development. These have set the minimum age of marriage to 18. However, some national laws still allow marriage at younger ages resulting in a disconnect between international treaties and national laws.
In Niger, for example, the minimum age of marriage is only 15 for girls, and around three quarters of girls are married before the age of 18, with a third being married before 15.
Millions of girls face the same fate each year across the world, particularly in regions where extreme poverty intersects with limited access to education. Understanding why child marriage persists requires looking to the structural factors that sustain it, with poverty and economic pressure being among the most significant. Marriages often come with dowries, which can provide much needed financial support for families and are therefore used as justification for these child marriages.
Yet the girls themselves are almost certain to remain trapped in poverty, missing out on schooling and opportunities for personal development. In many households, educating daughters is viewed as less valuable than marrying them off to fulfil traditional roles as wives and mothers, perpetuating a cycle of deprivation across generations.
However, while it is evident that poverty and economic pressure play a significant role in the persistence of child marriage, other factors, such as culture, also contribute to its prolonged existence. In countries like Niger, where the practice is widespread, families may feel compelled to marry off daughters early to protect them from stigma associated with premarital relationships. These cultural expectations are reinforced by strong traditions and community pressures, meaning that even when laws exist to set minimum marriage ages, they are often ignored in favour of what is socially accepted within the community. As a result, child marriage continues to be seen by many as a cultural obligation, and this deep-seated cultural acceptance makes the practice very resistant to change.
Ending child marriage requires more than just legislation; it demands a combination of poverty reduction, access to education, and community-level change. Only by addressing both economic hardship and entrenched cultural expectations can meaningful progress be made to protect the rights and futures of millions of girls worldwide.
Edited by Isabel Whitburn
Image: Ministerie Van Buitenlandse Zaken, ‘Princess Viktória de Bourbon of Parme and Princess Mabel attend Lifting the Veil, a meeting on child marriages at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague’, 2015 // CC BY-SA 2.0
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