Child marriage
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Child marriage and forced marriage
Marriage involving children under 18-years-old is still an accepted practice in many societies. UNICEF estimate that about a fifth of young women worldwide were married before their 18th birthday. Although boys can be affected by the practice, it is mostly girls who suffer slavery as a consequence of child marriage.
Not every marriage involving under-18s will amount to slavery, especially those between couples aged 16 to 18. But in many cases, child marriage causes serious harm to children’s physical and psychological health. Increasingly, countries understand the need to protect children from forced marriage.
The 2022 Global Estimates of Modern Slavery show that there has been a significant rise in people living in forced marriages since 2016 – this increase of 6.6 million people includes a significant proportion of children. Overall, 41% of people forced to marry are children, and, while it is very rare for children under the age of 10 to be fo...
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