By: Miriam Edelman
Press Release
WASHINGTON – DCNOW is now a member of The D.C. Coalition to End Child Marriage. DCNOW looks forward to collaborating with Coalition members.
DCNOW’s President Rose Brunache remarked, “I am pleased that DCNOW joined the D.C. Coalition to End Child Marriage. Child marriage violates girls’ and women’s rights and must end. It is crucial that D.C. stops this practice.”
The National Organization for Women (NOW) has condemned child marriage. As it said on its website in 2020, “child marriage remains an unfortunately pervasive issue that significantly harms the safety, health, and agency of women around the world.” NOW called on its state and local chapters to “review their own state’s laws with regard to the minimum age for marriage and take action to protect minors.”
In the U.S., child marriage almost always occurs between a girl and an adult man. Common reasons for child marriages in our nation include religious entities’ and systems’ valuing girls’ virginity. According to Alex Goyette, public policy manager at the Tahirih Justice Center’s Forced Marriage Initiative, “a patriarchal desire to control a girl’s body” factors into all child marriages.
Child marriages can have devastating effects on young girls. Young girls who marry are less likely to stay in school, harming their finances for the rest of their lives. Young brides also are at greater chance of being victims of physical and sexual violence, having dangerous pregnancy and childbirth problems, and getting HIV/AIDS (HIV/AIDS was mentioned in DCNOW’s “DCNOW Endorses 14th International Workshop on HIV & Women” piece.). It can be very difficult for a minor to be removed from her spouse. In many instances, minor brides commit self-harm and even attempt suicide.
Sherry Johnson illustrates the harmful effects of a child marriage. At 11 years old, she married a 20-year-old man, a church deacon who statutorily raped her before they were married. Her parents forced her to marry the man who impregnated her, freeing him from legal punishment for his crime against her. In Johnson’s home state of Florida, people could get married at 18, but a person who is pregnant or has a child can be married “at any age to a man of any age.” Johnson dropped out of school and had six children during her seven-year marriage. At age 17, she left her husband and divorced him. After she got divorced, she had two abusive marriages. Describing her efforts to end child marriage, she said
But I was able to forgive myself for what happened and it has enabled me to move forward with my life and to make sure no other child has to face what I went through and what I had to deal. I know, firsthand, how horrifying life in a child marriage is. There was nothing good, nothing happy about it, nothing enjoyable about my childhood. And it’s not fair for a child to be forced into this situation where they can’t protect themselves. That’s why I’ve been working over the last few years to close these legal loopholes that allow child marriage to happen in Florida and other parts of the US, and to protect children being raped — and, in a sense, being legally raped.
She was the reason for a bill that increased the minimum age to marry in Florida to 17 years.
The United Nations combats child marriage. Through Sustainable Development Goals, the United Nations called for the eradication of this practice by 2030. Its “Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” includes “5.3 Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.” The United Nations Population Fund-United Nations Children’s Fund, created to support target 5.3, referred to child marriage as “a human rights violation.” UNICEF described child marriage as a “fundamental violation of human rights.” The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women is one of multiple international agreements that address child marriage. UNICEF USA and its partners try to stop child marriage in the United States.
The United States helps international efforts on child marriage, which the U.S. views as “a human rights abuse.” In the “FACT SHEET: White House Celebrates International Day of the Girl and Announces New Actions to Support Youth in the U.S. and Abroad” (October 11, 2023), the Biden-Harris Administration said “USAID will invest $42 million and the Department of State will program $2.45 million to prevent and respond to child, early, and forced marriage globally.” “The Biden-Harris Administration’s Commitment to Implementing the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Consensus” statement (June 14, 2024) said that USAID spent $38.2 million to address worldwide child, early, and forced marriage, in fiscal year (FY) FY 2021 and FY 2022 and that for the first time, the U.S. gave $500,000 to the UN Global Programme to End Child Marriage in FY 2022.
Currently in our nation’s capital, people can get married when they are as young as 16, and individuals under 18 need consent of a parent or guardian to get married unless they had been married. Parental consent of child marriage is inadequate, as parental coercion could occur. Relatives and others sometimes threaten a person and/or use physical force to coerce a minor to get married or remain in a marriage she would like to leave. Some parents might feel that an early marriage could protect their children from sexual violence, but individuals who get married before they are 18 are more likely to be victims of intimate partner violence than people who get married when they are older. This violence happens more when there is a large age gap between the child bride and her spouse.
In 2011-2022, 41 minors got married in Washington, D.C. The District of Columbia should follow the 13 states that ended child marriage by mandating 18 as the youngest age to marry without exceptions. Virginia became the first Southern state to end child marriage, effective July 1, 2024. In Maryland, 17-year olds can get married if “(i) the individual has the consent of each living parent, guardian, or legal custodian of the individual;” or
(ii) if the individual does not have the consent required under item (i) of this item, either party to be married gives the clerk a certificate from a licensed physician, licensed physician assistant, or certified nurse practitioner stating that the physician, physician assistant, or nurse practitioner has examined the woman to be married and has found that she is pregnant or has given birth to a child;
D.C. must end child marriage in order to prevent people from Virginia, Maryland, and elsewhere from going to D.C. to engage in this detrimental practice. Girls need to be protected.
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