Countries Where the Legal Marriage Age Is Below 18

In more than 100 countries, the legal minimum marriage age (the youngest age at which a person may legally wed) sits below 18 for at least one gender, often with parental or judicial exceptions. Some nations set the floor as low as age 9, 13, or 15, numbers that consistently surprise Americans accustomed to a domestic baseline of 18 in most states.

What “Minimum Marriage Age” Actually Means in Law

The minimum marriage age is the youngest age at which a person can legally enter a binding marriage contract, with or without adult consent. This threshold differs sharply from the age of majority (the age at which a person is legally recognized as an adult, typically 18 worldwide), and the two numbers do not always align.

Many legal systems layer this concept with exceptions, meaning a country’s published minimum age can drop further if a parent, guardian, judge, or religious authority grants permission. That layering is why a country may officially list 16 as its marriage floor but allow marriages at 13 or younger through a court waiver. Understanding that gap is essential before reading any country-by-country comparison.

A third legal concept worth defining here is forced marriage (a union in which at least one party has not given free and full consent), which overlaps heavily with child marriage but is technically distinct. A minor can be legally married in a jurisdiction that permits it without that union being classified as forced under local law, even if international human rights bodies consider all marriages below 18 to be inherently coercive by definition.

A Snapshot: Minimum Marriage Ages by Region

The table below captures the absolute minimum age permitted by national law (including the lowest exception tier available), not just the standard floor.

Key Finding: Data above reflects laws reported through international monitoring bodies including UNICEF, Girls Not Brides, and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Laws change; always verify current national statutes directly.

The Countries That Tend to Surprise Americans Most

These nations draw particular attention because their laws diverge sharply from what U.S. audiences expect.

Niger: One of the World’s Highest Child Marriage Rates

Niger records one of the highest child marriage rates on the planet, with roughly 76 percent of girls married before age 18, according to UNICEF data. The legal floor sits at 15 for girls with parental approval, and enforcement gaps mean marriages at 13 occur and are documented. Niger ranks consistently at the bottom of the UN Human Development Index, and researchers at organizations like Girls Not Brides directly link poverty and limited girls’ education access to the persistence of early marriage in the Sahel region.

Bangladesh: The Country That Removed Its Own Age Floor

Bangladesh passed a law in 2017 formally known as the Child Marriage Restraint Act, which paradoxically includes a provision allowing marriage below 18 for girls with no minimum age specified, subject only to a court order. Human rights groups including Human Rights Watch and UNICEF Bangladesh raised immediate alarms. The government argued the clause was designed for narrow, exceptional circumstances, but critics noted it created a legal gap with no defined lower boundary at all.

Yemen: No Statutory Minimum Marriage Age in National Law

Yemen stands out because it has no nationally enforced minimum marriage age written into binding statute. A 2009 law attempted to set 17 as the floor but was never formally enacted. Girls as young as 8 have been documented in marriages by organizations including Save the Children Yemen. The ongoing conflict that intensified after 2015 has severely weakened enforcement of any protective frameworks that do exist.

Nigeria’s Federal-State Contradiction

Nigeria presents a striking legal contradiction. The Child Rights Act of 2003, a federal law, sets the minimum marriage age at 18. However, 12 northern states, governed substantially by Sharia law (Islamic legal principles derived from the Quran and Hadith), do not recognize the federal act and have no equivalent age floor. This dual-system reality means a girl in Zamfara State has effectively no legally enforced minimum marriage age, while a girl in Lagos State is protected at 18. The National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria has repeatedly called for national harmonization.

Pakistan: Legal Minimums and Tribal Reality

Pakistan’s Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929, still the primary federal statute, sets the minimum at 16 for girls and 18 for boys, making it one of the oldest such laws in South Asia. Violation of the act carries penalties of imprisonment up to one month and a fine of 1,000 Pakistani rupees, widely considered too weak to deter violations. The Sindh province passed the Sindh Child Marriages Restraint Act in 2013, raising the minimum to 18 for both genders within Sindh. However, in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (now merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa following a 2018 constitutional amendment), customary jirga (tribal council) decisions historically governed marriage without reference to statutory age floors. UNICEF estimates that approximately 21 percent of Pakistani girls are married before 18.

Ethiopia: Regional Variation Within One Country

Ethiopia’s Revised Family Law of 2000 set the national minimum at 18 for both genders, replacing an earlier law that had permitted marriage at 15 for girls. Despite the reform, UNICEF data shows that approximately 40 percent of Ethiopian girls are married before 18, concentrated heavily in regions including Amhara, Afar, and Somali Regional State, where customary practices operate in parallel with statutory law. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has documented that birth registration rates remain low enough that age verification is frequently impossible in rural settings, allowing underage marriages to proceed undetected.

Iran and Afghanistan: Codified Minimums That Still Permit Early Marriage

Iran’s Civil Code explicitly sets the marriage age at 13 for girls and 15 for boys, with judicial approval allowing marriages below those ages. That means Iran is one of the few countries where an age below the international standard of 18 is not an exception but the legal rule. The Iranian Parliament has debated raising the age multiple times since 2000, but no binding reform has passed as of the most recent legislative session reviewed.

Afghanistan’s Law on Marriage set 16 for girls and 18 for boys, with judicial permission reducing the girl’s floor to 15. Following the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, formal enforcement of even those floors has significantly deteriorated, according to reports from UN Women and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, which itself was dissolved in 2022 under the new government.

Southeast Asia and the Pacific: Varied and Shifting Legal Frameworks

Southeast Asia and Oceania present a notably uneven picture, with several nations holding marriage age laws that still surprise observers familiar only with Western legal norms.

The Philippines: A Recent but Partial Reform

The Philippines raised its minimum marriage age from 16 to 18 through Republic Act 11596, signed into law in December 2021, which also criminalizes the facilitation of child marriage. Before this reform, the Philippines held one of the lower legal minimums in the region. However, the Muslim Mindanao region is governed in part by the Code of Muslim Personal Laws (Presidential Decree 1083 of 1977), which sets the minimum at puberty for girls and does not specify a numerical floor. The application of this parallel legal code to Muslim Filipinos means that even after the 2021 reform, a portion of the population remains outside the protection of the new national minimum.

Papua New Guinea: Customary Marriage at Any Age

Papua New Guinea’s Marriage Act sets the minimum at 16 for girls with parental consent and 18 for boys. However, customary marriage (marriage conducted under traditional community practices recognized by Papua New Guinean law) carries no defined age minimum under the Customs Recognition Act. The Law Reform Commission of Papua New Guinea has repeatedly flagged this gap, noting that customary marriage of very young girls is practiced in several highland provinces with no legal mechanism to intervene.

Cambodia: 18 on Paper, Younger in Practice

Cambodia’s Law on Marriage and Family sets 18 as the minimum for both genders. Despite this, UNICEF data estimates that approximately 19 percent of Cambodian girls are married before 18, with the highest rates in rural provinces bordering Thailand and Vietnam. The gap between statute and practice is attributed primarily to weak civil registration infrastructure and limited awareness of the law in rural communities, factors also documented by the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center.

What Happens in the United States

The United States does not have a single federal minimum marriage age, which itself surprises many Americans.

1. Before 2016, several U.S. states had no defined minimum marriage age at all if a judge approved the union.
2. Between 2016 and 2023, a wave of state-level reforms passed, with states including Delaware (2018), New Jersey (2018), Pennsylvania (2020), Rhode Island (2021), Massachusetts (2022), and Minnesota (2023) enacting outright bans on marriage below 18.
3. As of 2024, roughly 12 states still permit marriage under 18 with parental or judicial consent, and a handful have no defined lower floor for judicially approved marriages.
4. Unchained At Last, a U.S. nonprofit dedicated to ending forced and child marriage, estimates that more than 300,000 children were married in the United States between 2000 and 2018, using data from the American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Key Finding: The United States has not passed a federal law setting a nationwide minimum marriage age. Federal legislation titled the Ending Child Marriage Act has been introduced in Congress but has not achieved passage as of the time this article was written.

Which U.S. States Still Allow Marriage Under 18

The following states retained legal pathways for marriage below 18 as of early 2024, though legislative sessions may have altered this list:

Note: State laws change frequently. This table reflects commonly reported data through 2023 and should be verified against current state statutes.

The Hidden Data Problem in the United States

One underreported aspect of child marriage in the United States is that marriage licenses are not tracked in a centralized federal database. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stopped collecting marriage and divorce data at the national level in 1995, creating a decades-long gap in federal statistics. Researchers at Tahirih Justice Center, a Virginia-based nonprofit, and journalists at Reuters who conducted an extensive 2017 investigation have had to reconstruct child marriage figures from state-level records, which are inconsistently formatted and not always publicly accessible. This data vacuum means the actual number of child marriages in the United States is almost certainly higher than reported figures suggest.

How Parental Consent Laws Work as a Legal Loophole

Parental consent exceptions are provisions in national or state law that allow minors to marry below the standard legal minimum if one or both parents formally agree. In many jurisdictions, this consent is submitted to a civil registrar or court, and the union proceeds with minimal scrutiny.

The practical problem, documented by UNICEF and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), is that the parents giving consent are sometimes the same individuals arranging the marriage for economic or social reasons. When the minor’s own voice is absent from the legal process, consent-based exceptions can function as tools of coercion rather than protection.

Judicial exceptions, where a judge must approve the marriage, are theoretically more protective, but Girls Not Brides research across 12 countries found that judges routinely approved minor marriages in a matter of minutes with no independent assessment of the child’s wishes.

The Pregnancy Exception: A Specific Legal Trigger

Several U.S. states historically allowed marriage below their standard minimum specifically when the minor was pregnant, treating marriage as a remedy for out-of-wedlock pregnancy. States including Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Kentucky maintained such provisions well into the 2010s. Researchers at Unchained At Last documented cases in which judges approved marriages of pregnant 13 and 14-year-olds under this rationale. Critics, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, have pointed out that pregnancy exception clauses effectively reward the act that may have caused the pregnancy, which in cases involving minors can constitute statutory rape under the same state’s criminal law, creating a profound legal contradiction.

Regions Where Progress Has Been Notably Significant

Not all movement on this issue points in the same direction. Several countries have raised their legal marriage age in meaningful ways.

• Indonesia raised its minimum from 16 to 19 for both genders in 2019 through an amendment to the 1974 Marriage Law, following a petition to the Constitutional Court of Indonesia.
• Malawi raised its floor to 18 with no exceptions in 2017, one of the strongest reforms on the African continent.
• Ecuador eliminated all exceptions to its 18-year minimum in 2015, closing judicial loopholes that had previously allowed marriages as young as 12.
• Guatemala raised its minimum from 14 to 18 in 2017, though implementation challenges remain documented by UNICEF Guatemala.
• Sierra Leone passed the Registration of Customary Marriage and Divorce Act and subsequent reforms pushing toward 18 as a firm floor.
• The Philippines enacted Republic Act 11596 in 2021, criminalizing facilitation of child marriage and raising the standard minimum to 18.
• Tanzania has been subject to ongoing court battles, with its Court of Appeal ruling in 2016 striking down provisions of the Law of Marriage Act of 1971 that had set the minimum at 14 for girls, though legislative replacement of those provisions has moved slowly.
• Somalia passed a provisional constitution in 2012 that set 18 as the minimum, though enforcement in a country with fragmented governance remains extremely limited.

These reforms demonstrate that legal change is achievable and that international advocacy from bodies like UNICEF, the UN Population Fund, and Plan International meaningfully correlates with legislative movement.

Why These Laws Persist: Economic and Cultural Drivers

Laws permitting early marriage do not exist in isolation from the economic and social conditions that produce them. Researchers at the International Center for Research on Women identify several reinforcing factors.

The World Bank has calculated that ending child marriage could generate $7 trillion in increased human capital and earnings over the course of a generation, a figure cited in its 2017 report on the economic impacts of child marriage across 15 high-prevalence countries. This economic framing has increasingly been used alongside human rights arguments to push for legislative reform.

Health Consequences That Reinforce the Legal Debate

The health dimension of child marriage is one of the strongest arguments reformers bring to legislative bodies, including the U.S. Congress when debating federal minimum age standards.

Complications from pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death globally among girls aged 15 to 19, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Girls who give birth before 18 face significantly elevated risks of obstetric fistula (a childbirth injury that creates an abnormal opening between the birth canal and bladder or rectum, causing chronic incontinence and social exclusion), maternal mortality, and infant mortality compared with women who give birth after 18.

The WHO and UNICEF jointly report that babies born to mothers under 18 are 60 percent more likely to die in their first year of life than babies born to mothers aged 19 or older. Children of young mothers who do survive are more likely to be underweight, face developmental delays, and have lower school completion rates, creating a multigenerational cycle that researchers at the ICRW describe as a poverty trap.

Mental health outcomes are also significantly worse. A 2019 study published in the journal BMC Public Health analyzing data from 34 low- and middle-income countries found that women married before 18 had substantially higher rates of depression, anxiety, and reported intimate partner violence compared with women who married as adults, even after controlling for poverty and education levels.

Customary and Religious Law: A Parallel Legal Universe

Customary law refers to traditional, community-based rules governing marriage and family that operate alongside or instead of a country’s formal statutory law. In many nations across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East, customary or religious law functions as the primary legal framework for the majority of the population, particularly in rural areas.

Sudan, for example, follows personal status laws rooted in Islamic jurisprudence for Muslim citizens, where puberty rather than a fixed numerical age can be sufficient for marriage. India’s personal law system splits along religious lines: the Hindu Marriage Act sets 18 for women and 21 for men, while the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act does not specify a minimum age, creating a documented gap that the Supreme Court of India has addressed in multiple rulings.

The coexistence of statutory and customary systems is one of the most significant structural reasons why legal reforms in national codes do not automatically translate into changed practices on the ground.

How International Human Rights Law Intersects With Domestic Custom

International human rights law refers to the body of treaties, conventions, and customary international norms that states voluntarily accept as binding obligations. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979 and ratified by 189 countries, explicitly requires states to specify a minimum marriage age and make marriage registration compulsory.

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, the treaty body that monitors CEDAW compliance, has issued General Recommendation No. 29 and subsequent guidance specifying that 18 should be the firm minimum with no exceptions, including religious or customary ones. Countries that have ratified CEDAW but maintain lower statutory or customary minimums are technically in violation of their treaty obligations, but international law has no enforcement mechanism that compels compliance. The result is that ratification of CEDAW has not by itself produced legal change in countries with deeply entrenched customary marriage systems.

Boys and Child Marriage: The Underreported Dimension

Nearly all discussion of child marriage in both policy literature and media focuses on girls, for statistically valid reasons. Girls are married young at substantially higher rates than boys globally. However, boys are not entirely absent from the data.

UNICEF estimates that approximately 115 million men alive today were married before 18, compared to 650 million women. In some specific countries, including Central African Republic and parts of South Asia, boys are married young at rates significant enough to appear in national surveys. The legal frameworks in many countries reflect this asymmetry, setting a higher minimum for boys than for girls, as seen in India (21 for men, 18 for women), Pakistan (18 for men, 16 for women), and Bangladesh (21 for men, 18 for women).

Advocacy organizations have begun raising the question of whether gender-differentiated minimum marriage ages themselves reflect a structural assumption that girls are ready for marriage at a younger age than boys, an assumption that human rights bodies including the Committee on the Rights of the Child have explicitly rejected, calling for a uniform 18 minimum regardless of gender.

What Americans Can Do With This Information

Understanding these disparities has direct relevance for U.S. policy, international development funding, and travel awareness. Americans working with international nonprofit organizations, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) programs, or foreign service postings regularly encounter these legal frameworks.

For those seeking to support reform efforts, several organizations active in this space include:

• Girls Not Brides, a global partnership of more than 1,400 civil society organizations in 100 countries.
• Unchained At Last, a U.S.-focused organization based in New Jersey.
• UNICEF’s Child Protection Division, which monitors global prevalence and supports legislative reform.
• Human Rights Watch’s Women’s Rights Division, which documents violations and advocates for legal change.
• Plan International’s Girls’ Rights Work, focused on education access and ending child marriage.
• Tahirih Justice Center, based in Falls Church, Virginia, working on forced marriage and immigration protections for survivors.
• Girls Not Brides USA, the U.S. chapter of the global partnership, focused on federal and state legislative advocacy.

From a purely legal standpoint, any American traveling or working abroad should understand that child marriage laws in destination countries may differ radically from U.S. norms, and that facilitating such a marriage involving a U.S. citizen minor can carry federal criminal liability under the Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today (PROTECT) Act of 2003.

Immigration Consequences of Child Marriage Involving the United States

Child marriage intersects with U.S. immigration law in ways that are not widely understood by the general public. Historically, a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident could petition for a foreign spouse regardless of the spouse’s age, as long as the marriage was legal in the country where it occurred. This created a documented pathway through which foreign nationals, some as young as 14 or 15, were brought to the United States as spouses of adult citizens.

Congress addressed part of this gap through provisions in the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 and subsequent immigration enforcement guidance, but a comprehensive statutory fix has not been enacted. The Tahirih Justice Center submitted detailed testimony to Congress documenting cases in which immigrant minors arrived in the United States as spouses and had effectively no legal mechanism to exit the marriage, because their immigration status was tied to their spouse’s petition. The Department of Homeland Security issued updated guidance in 2021 restricting recognition of certain child marriages for immigration purposes, but the legal landscape remains contested.

The Global Benchmark and Where the Law Is Heading

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), adopted in 1989 and ratified by 196 countries (the United States being one of two nations that have not ratified it), does not explicitly state 18 as the marriage minimum but calls on states to abolish harmful traditional practices. The Committee on the Rights of the Child has interpreted this as requiring a minimum marriage age of 18 with no exceptions.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically Goal 5.3, call for an end to child marriage by 2030. Current trajectories, modeled by the World Bank and UNICEF in their joint monitoring frameworks, indicate that without significantly accelerated reform, millions of girls will still be married before 18 at that deadline. The gap between international legal standards and national reality remains one of the most persistent human rights challenges in the world today.

Why the United States Not Ratifying the UNCRC Matters

The United States and Somalia were the only two countries that had not ratified the UNCRC as of its adoption period. Somalia subsequently ratified in 2015, leaving the United States as the sole UN member state that has not ratified the treaty. While U.S. representatives have participated in UNCRC review processes as observers, the non-ratification means the United States has no formal treaty obligation to align its domestic marriage laws with the Convention’s standards. Advocates including UNICEF USA have argued that ratification would create both a legal obligation and a political incentive to finally pass a federal minimum marriage age, though ratification would require a two-thirds majority vote in the U.S. Senate.

Comparing Legal Protections: A Framework Summary

FAQs

What country has the lowest legal marriage age in the world?

Several countries have effectively no statutory minimum, including Yemen and certain jurisdictions within Nigeria and Sudan, where customary or religious law governs rather than a fixed numerical statute. Iran formally sets the floor at 13 for girls in its Civil Code, making it one of the lowest explicitly codified minimums globally.

What is the legal marriage age in the United States?

The United States has no single federal minimum marriage age. Most states set 18 as the standard floor, but as of 2024, approximately 12 states still allow marriage below 18 with parental or judicial consent. States including Delaware, New Jersey, and Massachusetts have enacted outright bans with no exceptions.

Can a 13-year-old legally get married anywhere in the world?

Yes. In Iran, the legal minimum is 13 for girls with no exception required beyond standard civil registration. In countries with no statutory floor, such as Yemen, marriages at 13 or younger occur without violating national law. Several other countries allow marriage at 13 through parental or judicial exceptions.

What is the marriage age in Niger?

Niger’s standard minimum marriage age is 15 for girls with parental consent, and marriages at 13 are documented and occur. Niger has one of the highest child marriage rates in the world, with approximately 76 percent of girls married before 18, according to UNICEF.

Why does Bangladesh have no minimum marriage age?

Bangladesh’s Child Marriage Restraint Act of 2017 includes a special provision allowing marriage below 18 with no defined age floor when a court grants approval. The government argued this was intended for rare circumstances, but human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch criticized it as creating an exploitable loophole.

What is the minimum marriage age in India?

India’s statutory minimum is 18 for women and 21 for men under the Hindu Marriage Act. However, Muslim personal law in India does not specify a numerical minimum, creating a dual-system gap. The Supreme Court of India has addressed this in multiple rulings, but a uniform civil code has not been enacted.

Is child marriage legal in any U.S. state right now?

As of 2024, marriage below 18 remains legal in roughly 12 U.S. states when a parent or judge approves. No state currently allows marriage at or below 14 through its standard exception framework, but some state laws technically set no absolute lower floor for judicially approved marriages.

What is the marriage age in Saudi Arabia?

Saudi Arabia issued regulations in 2019 setting 18 as a guideline minimum, requiring court approval for marriages involving anyone under 18. However, enforcement is inconsistent, and courts have approved marriages involving girls significantly younger, making the practical floor uncertain.

How many children are married before 18 globally?

UNICEF estimates that approximately 650 million women alive today were married before age 18. Each year, an estimated 12 million additional girls are married before reaching 18, the majority in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

What is the marriage age in Mexico?

Mexico passed federal legislation in 2019 raising the minimum marriage age to 18 with no exceptions at the federal level. However, implementation across all 31 states has been uneven, and some state-level legal frameworks still contain provisions that courts have used to approve unions involving minors.

Can a U.S. citizen legally marry a minor abroad?

A U.S. citizen who engages in or facilitates a marriage with a minor in a foreign country can face federal criminal liability under the PROTECT Act of 2003, particularly if the marriage involves a sexual component. The law applies to conduct by U.S. nationals outside U.S. borders. Legal advice from a licensed attorney is essential in any such situation.

What organization tracks child marriage rates worldwide?

UNICEF is the primary UN agency tracking child marriage data globally, publishing country-level statistics through its Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS). Girls Not Brides, a global partnership of over 1,400 civil society organizations, aggregates country-specific legal and prevalence data and maintains one of the most comprehensive public databases on child marriage laws worldwide.

What is the difference between minimum marriage age and age of consent?

The minimum marriage age is the youngest age at which a person may legally wed. The age of consent is the youngest age at which a person may legally agree to sexual activity. These numbers are set independently by each country and frequently differ, and in some jurisdictions, marriage below the age of consent is nonetheless legally permitted under local law.

Did Afghanistan raise its marriage age under the Taliban?

No. Following the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, enforcement of the pre-existing marriage age minimums of 16 for girls and 18 for boys has deteriorated significantly. UN Women and other monitoring bodies report increased child marriages, with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, which previously tracked such abuses, having been dissolved by the Taliban government in 2022.

What is the Sustainable Development Goal related to child marriage?

SDG 5.3, part of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, calls on all nations to eliminate child, early, and forced marriages by 2030. Current projection models by the World Bank and UNICEF indicate the world is not on track to meet this target without significantly accelerated legislative and social reform.

What did Indonesia do to change its marriage age?

Indonesia amended its 1974 Marriage Law in 2019, raising the minimum marriage age from 16 to 19 for both girls and boys. The reform followed a ruling by the Constitutional Court of Indonesia that the previous law’s lower age for girls violated constitutional equality protections. Judicial dispensations allowing marriage below 19 remain available in limited circumstances.

Why does Nigeria have two different legal systems for marriage age?

Nigeria operates under a dual legal structure. The Child Rights Act of 2003 applies federally and sets 18 as the minimum. However, 12 northern states operate substantially under Sharia law, which does not recognize the federal act and sets no equivalent numerical floor, creating a legal contradiction with severe practical consequences for girls in those states.

What are the health consequences of child marriage?

Complications from pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death among girls aged 15 to 19 globally, according to the World Health Organization. Babies born to mothers under 18 are 60 percent more likely to die in their first year of life compared to babies born to mothers 19 or older. Girls married young also face significantly higher rates of depression, anxiety, and domestic violence, according to research published in BMC Public Health in 2019.

Does child marriage affect boys as well as girls?

Yes, though at substantially lower rates. UNICEF estimates 115 million men alive today were married before 18, compared to 650 million women. Several countries set higher marriage minimums for boys than for girls, which human rights bodies including the Committee on the Rights of the Child have criticized as embedding the assumption that girls are marriage-ready at younger ages than boys.

How does child marriage intersect with U.S. immigration law?

Historically, a U.S. citizen could petition to bring a foreign child spouse to the United States if the marriage was legal in the country where it occurred. The Department of Homeland Security issued updated guidance in 2021 restricting recognition of certain child marriages for immigration purposes, but comprehensive federal legislation closing this pathway has not been enacted. The Tahirih Justice Center has documented cases of immigrant minors arriving as spouses with no accessible legal mechanism to exit the marriage.

What is the CEDAW treaty and does it ban child marriage?

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979 and ratified by 189 countries, requires states to specify a minimum marriage age and make marriage registration compulsory. The CEDAW Committee has specified that 18 should be the firm minimum with no religious or customary exceptions. Countries that have ratified CEDAW but maintain lower minimums are in technical violation of their treaty obligations, though international law lacks a direct enforcement mechanism to compel compliance.