Everyone talks about ending child marriage, yet the numbers remain obscene. Nearly 650 million women alive today were married before turning 18. That is not tradition. It is a global crime scene disguised as culture. Laws exist. Treaties exist. What does not exist is enforcement.
The illusion of progress hides in technicalities. Countries boast about legal minimums set at 18, but loopholes swallow the rule. Parental consent. Judicial waivers. Customary exceptions. Every clause is an escape hatch for patriarchy. Sierra Leone took the right step in 2024, outlawing marriage under 18 with prison terms up to 15 years. But for every reform, another country drags girls backward. Iraq’s religious courts are being handed authority that could legalize unions for girls as young as nine. In the United States, 34 states still allow minors to marry with permission slips.
This is not a regional failure. It is a global one. From Asia’s rural provinces to the Sahel’s crisis zones, child marriage grows where law enforcement stops at the city limits. Conflict, displacement, and poverty drive families to trade daughters for survival. Each economic downturn spikes the numbers. During the pandemic, UNICEF warned that up to ten million more girls could be forced into marriage by 2030.
International law already calls this what it is. The Convention on the Rights of the Child forbids marriage below 18. CEDAW condemns forced and early marriage. Yet governments that signed both keep loopholes alive. The “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine was meant to make prevention mandatory. Instead, it became a slogan repeated at conferences between catered lunches.
The truth is simple. Child marriage is preventable. What keeps it alive is profit, politics, and the convenience of silence. Ending it requires stripping away the exceptions and funding enforcement like lives depend on it, because they do. Courts must treat every under-age union as a rights violation, not a family dispute. Aid programs must shift from awareness campaigns to economic empowerment and legal aid for survivors.
Every girl forced into marriage before 18 loses her education, her health, and often her life. The treaties say “never again.” Yet every year repeats the same story, one unreported wedding at a time.
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