Child, Early and Forced Marriage Ending and Preventing Forced Marriage

Urges States to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of all women and girls, including those subjected to child, early and forced marriage, which include the right to education and the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including the right to sexual and reproductive health, to promote equality in all aspects of marriage and its dissolution, to guarantee equal access for every girl and woman to quality education, as well as education explaining consent, respect for boundaries and what constitutes unacceptable behaviour and how to report it, that builds self-esteem and informed decision-making and communication skills and promotes the development of respectful relationships based on gender equality, inclusion and human rights, skills development programmes, vocational training and lifelong learning opportunities, counselling, social services to protect them from all forms of violence, including sexual and gender-based violence and domestic and intimate partner violence, formal employment, to increase their economic independence, and psychological, sexual and reproductive health-care services and medical care, to decrease their social isolation and to increase their economic and political participation, including by establishing or strengthening childcare services and working with communities to change discriminatory social norms;

Calls upon States to take a comprehensive, rights-based, age-, gender- and disability-responsive, survivor- and victim-centred and multisectoral approach, in consultation with, and with the full, equal, effective, meaningful and inclusive participation and leadership of, women and girls, including those who are hardest to reach and those who have been subjected to forced marriage and are already married, divorced, separated or widowed, and with relevant stakeholders, including men and boys, parents and other family members, health workers, teachers, religious, traditional and community leaders and actors, minority groups, including national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minority groups, civil society, organizations led by girls, women’s human rights organizations, youth and feminist groups, human rights defenders, including women human rights defenders, parliaments, national human rights institutions, children’s ombudspersons, humanitarian and development actors, the media and the private sector, that takes into account linkages with other harmful practices in the prevention of and response to forced marriage, and to pay particular attention to the specific needs of all women and girls, in particular those in vulnerable or marginalized situations and those experiencing multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and violence, stigmatization, exclusion and inequalities, including in humanitarian situations;

Urges States to take comprehensive, multisectoral and human rights-based measures to prevent and eliminate forced marriage, and to address structural and underlying causes and risk factors, including by:

Calls upon States to promote and protect the right of all women and girls to education, including in situations of armed conflict and humanitarian emergencies, and to ensure equal access, by:

Urges States, with the collaboration of relevant stakeholders, including the private sector, communities and not-for-profit, youth-led and civil society organizations, to tackle poverty, the lack of economic opportunities for women and girls and other entrenched economic incentives and inequalities that act as drivers of forced marriage and as obstacles to leaving a forced or abusive relationship, and to promote sustainable development, including by:

Also urges States to respect, protect and fulfil the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including the right to sexual and reproductive health, free from discrimination, coercion and violence, by:

Further urges States to ensure that marriage is entered into only with the informed, free and full consent of the intending spouses by recognizing child, early and forced marriage as a distinct violation, abuse or impairment of human rights, promoting equality in all aspects of marriage, divorce, child custody and the economic consequences of marriage and its dissolution, and enacting, enforcing, harmonizing, financing and upholding laws and policies aimed at preventing, responding to and eliminating forced marriage and that respect and protect bodily integrity and autonomy, protecting those at risk and abolishing practices and legislation that are discriminatory against women and girls, including, as applicable, provisions in civil, criminal and personal status law governing marriage and family relations, including by working towards the elimination of loopholes in customary laws, where they exist;

Calls upon States to ensure that all initiatives to draft, amend and implement criminal laws addressing forced marriage are part of comprehensive, rights-based, gender-responsive and cross-government prevention and response strategies and are coupled with protection measures and services for victims, survivors and those who are at risk of being subjected to forced marriage, and to ensure that they never face criminalization;

Urges States to ensure access to justice and accountability mechanisms and remedies for the effective implementation and enforcement of laws aimed at preventing and eliminating forced marriage and protecting the rights of those subjected to this harmful practice, including by informing them about their rights under relevant laws, including in marriage and at its dissolution, improving legal infrastructure, mainstreaming gender equality and human rights perspectives into justice systems, ensuring equal access to legal aid, including legal advice, assistance and representation, as well as access to judicial and other legal remedies, addressing legal inconsistencies, training law enforcement officers, members of the judiciary and professionals working with women and children and ensuring oversight of the handling of cases of forced marriage;

Also urges States to hold persons in positions of authority, whether in public or private environments, such as teachers, health workers, social workers and caregivers in institutions, religious and community leaders and actors, traditional authorities, politicians and law enforcement officials, including at the local government level, accountable for not complying with and/or upholding laws and regulations relating to violence against women and girls, including concerning forced marriage, in order to prevent and respond to it in a gender-responsive manner, to end impunity and to avoid the abuse of power leading to violence against women and girls and the revictimization of victims and survivors of such violence;

Further urges States to ensure access to justice and shelters for protection during the process of annulling a marriage, taking into account the fact that victims may be subjected to physical or psychological pressure to desist and may face a risk of retribution, and to ensure that victims and survivors of forced marriage, and their children where applicable, are granted full reparation, including measures of restitution;

Calls upon States to ensure the timely registration of births and marriages, including by providing, where lacking, mechanisms for the registration of customary and religious marriages, and affirms the need for States and relevant United Nations entities and agencies to improve the collection and use of quantitative, qualitative and comparable data, while observing the principles of confidentiality and informed consent, on violence against women and girls and harmful practices, disaggregated by sex, age, disability, civil status, race, ethnicity, migratory status, geographical location, socioeconomic status, education level and other key factors, as appropriate, to enhance research on, and the dissemination of evidence-based and good practices relating to the prevention and elimination of, child, early and forced marriage, and to strengthen the monitoring and assessment of the impact of existing policies and programmes as a means of ensuring their effectiveness and implementation;

Encourages States to increase public funding and capacity-building support for community-based organizations, including organizations led or initiated by women, children or young people, including girls, focusing on the human rights of women and girls, and calls upon States to promote the meaningful participation of and active consultation with children, women, adolescents and young people, including girls who are already married, on all issues affecting them, including those related to mental health, to strengthen their voice, agency and leadership and to raise awareness about their rights, including the negative impact of child, early and forced marriage, through safe spaces, forums and support networks, including in digital spaces, that provide information, life skills and leadership skills training and opportunities, including catch-up and literacy education, and lifelong learning opportunities, remote learning opportunities and childcare, as needed, that empower them and allow them to express themselves, to participate meaningfully in all decisions that affect them and to become agents of change within their communities;

Also encourages States to work in partnership with the private sector, civil society, rural, community-based and faith-based organizations, including those who support and are led by women, young women, young people and survivors, persons with disabilities, marginalized racial, ethnic and Indigenous communities, feminist groups, women human rights defenders, women journalists and media workers and trade, labour and other professional unions, as well as other relevant stakeholders, and to support initiatives undertaken by such organizations, including by allocating adequate financial resources aimed at promoting gender equality and inclusion, eliminating violence against women and girls and harmful practices and allowing civil society to operate freely and safely, without fear of intimidation or reprisals;

Further encourages States to develop the capacity of national human rights institutions and criminal justice systems to investigate human rights violations and abuses and criminal offences relating to the practice of child, early and forced marriage, and to monitor progress in preventing and eliminating this harmful practice;

Encourages States to engage, educate, encourage and support men and boys to be positive role models for gender equality, to promote respectful relationships and to refrain from and condemn all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls and harmful practices, such as forced marriage, and to increase understanding among men and boys of the harmful effects of violence for the victim or survivor and society as a whole so that they take responsibility and are held accountable for behaviour, including for behaviour that perpetuates gender stereotypes and negative social norms, including patriarchal masculinity, sexism and misogyny, and that men and boys take responsibility for their sexual and reproductive behaviour, for the equitable sharing of responsibilities with respect to care and household work and for sharing access equally to families’ resources and opportunities;

Requests the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to prepare concise and action-oriented guidelines as a set of orientations for States on the effective application of a human rights-based approach to the development and implementation of laws, policies and programmes to prevent and eliminate child, early and forced marriage, and to submit the guidelines, in a comprehensive report, accessible to persons with disabilities, including in an accessible and easy-to-read format, to the Human Rights Council at its fifty-ninth session;

Also requests the Office of the High Commissioner to facilitate the open, transparent and inclusive elaboration of the guidelines through consultations with States and with the participation of relevant United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, intergovernmental organizations, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the Committee on the Rights of the Child and other treaty bodies, special procedures, regional human rights mechanisms, national human rights institutions, civil society organizations, young people, academia and other relevant stakeholders, including women’s human rights organizations and women and girls who are victims and survivors of a forced marriage, including through informal online consultations with States and other stakeholders at the regional level.