Child Marriage
Child marriage violates human dignity, personal freedom, and property rights of minors.
Key Chinese laws and regulations addressing child marriage include the 2018 amended Constitution and the 2020 Civil Code, which focus on citizens' fundamental rights.
The 2015 amended Code for Marriage Registration, 2018 amended Law on the Protection of Women's Rights and Interests, and the 2020 amended Law on the Protection of Minors regulate marriage registration and safeguard the rights and interests of women and children.
These legal provisions empower citizens to protect their rights and interests when facing the issue of child marriage.
The definition of child marriage
Child marriage refers to a marriage or domestic partnership, formal or informal, between a child and an adult or between a child and another child.
The definition actually consists of two key concepts: "child" and "marriage".
The internationally accepted definition of a child, established by one of the most universally recognised and widely ratified treaties in history, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is that the age range of a child is below 18 years, which is also the legal definition used in most parts of the world. Some countries set the age of majority before 18 and allow individuals under the age of 18 to marry. In other countries, the law allows individuals to marry above the age of majority, such as in Nepal, where the law requires men and women to be at least 20 years of age at the time of marriage, and in China, where the legal age of marriage is no earlier than 22 years for men and 20 years for women. The concept of marriage also varies across cultures and may be formal or informal, governed by civil, common or religious law, or simply a customary practice. For example, in many regions, marriages can be recognised by the community without legal registration and only require a ceremony.
Causes of child marriage
1）Poverty, family debt, backwardness
Child marriage can occur when parents face economic difficulties or when girls are forced to drop out of school due to poverty or circumstances. Families in poor areas often have a large number of children, and parents hope that child marriage will reduce the number of children they have to support. Family debt and natural disasters, such as tsunamis and droughts, also cause families to sell girls as "brides" in order to survive. Where the bridegroom's family pays the bride price, parents can marry off their daughters as a source of income in difficult circumstances
2）Control of females
Men's strong passion for controlling and suppressing women's sexuality is rooted in the desire to establish a patriarchal relationship. As long as a woman may have sex with more than one man, her husband will never know if her child is his or not. It is therefore necessary to maintain the "purity" of the girl and her "virginity" before marriage. After marriage, the wife should not be allowed to go out on her own, lest she be involved in sexual encounters that could result in illegitimate children. The risk that an unmarried girl faces of being attacked by a sexual predator increases the pressure on her to be "protected" in order to be married off, and the older the woman, the more she worries about becoming a non-virgin.
3）Religion, culture and civil law
In order to cement strategic alliances between families, some children are betrothed before they are born. Early marriages between feudal lords, city-states and kingdoms before children reached adulthood or even birth, as a means of establishing political alliances, trade and peace, have been commonplace throughout human history. Arranged child marriages were an important means of preserving political status and family interests.
4）Self Choice
Not all child marriages are the result of a decision by parents or guardians. Some adolescents make the autonomous decision to marry their partners, who may be their peers or older. These marriages may be an exercise of independence, a way of leaving home or escaping a difficult situation, such as extreme poverty or domestic violence, or they may be a form of rebellion against parental authority. In some cultures, restrictions on sex outside of marriage also encourage some adolescents to see marriage as the only avenue for sexual activity
Xiangxi local student Long Haiyin playing a girl forced to marriage. She is wrapped in a mosquito net, symbolizing poverty.
Harms and risks
1）Denial of the right to education
2）violence
3）Health problem
4）Obstacles to the development of women's rights
Relevant laws, regulations and policy documents in China
Child marriage seriously violates minors' human dignity, personal freedom and property rights. Among the relevant laws and regulations in China, the Constitution of the People's Republic of China (amended in 2018) and the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China (2020) provide for it from the perspective of the fundamental rights of citizens, and the Code for Marriage Registration (amended in 2015), the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Women's Rights and Interests (amended in 2018), and the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Minors (2020) amended) regulate the requirements for registering marriages and the perspective of women's and children's rights and interests, respectively. These laws, regulations and policy documents ensure that citizens can legally defend their rights and interests in the face of child marriage.
Relevant International Documents Podcasts
A number of international documents have also addressed the topic of child marriage from the perspective of children's and women's rights protection. The United Nations Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriage (1962) emphasises the need for countries to establish a minimum age for marriage. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) defends the rights and interests of children against the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979), the Programme of Action for The Fourth World Conference on Women (1995), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1997), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1997), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1997). Programme of Action for The Fourth World Conference on Women (1995), Elimination and Prevention of All Forms of Violence against Women and Girls (2013), etc., mainly from the perspective of human rights protection. ), and others emphasise the importance of prohibiting child marriage, mainly from a human rights protection perspective. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights General Comment No. 22 on the Right to Sexual and Reproductive Health) (2016), on the other hand, addresses the importance of providing adolescents with access to contraception from a reproductive health rights perspective in order to reduce the incidence of child marriage and early childbearing.
