Category : Child Marriage
10 States Later: Ending Child Marriage in the United States
Michigan recently became the 10th state to ban child marriage, a milestone victory! In this webinar, Casey Swegman, Director of Public Policy, and Alex Goyette, Public Policy Manager, discuss this significant milestone and Tahirih’s vision for ending child marriage in the next 40 states.
U.S. States Fail to Protect Children’s Rights
Author: Human Rights Watch
Published: September 2022
A new interactive scorecard from Human Rights Watch assessed state laws across the country to see how well each state has done in implementing the standards set by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The laws address four issues impacting children: child marriage, corporal punishment, child labor, and juvenile justice. No state received better than a “C” grade, and the United States remains the only country in the world that has not ratified the Convention. Read more.
Panel Event: A New Vision for Addressing Forced Marriage in the United States
A panel of national experts discussed how the United States National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence addresses forced and child marriage. Panelists include:
- Alena Victor, Chief Program Officer, Womankind
- Grace Huang, Directory of Policy, API-GBV
- Shenna Morris, Director of Policy, NRCDV
- Dr. Nusrat Ameen, Senior Director, Daya
- Casey Swegman, Director of Public Policy, Tahirih Justice Center
Read the full Framework for Addressing Forced and Child Marriage in the U.S. National Action to End Gender Based Violence here.
The Alignment of U.S. Child Marriage Laws to Data and Consent: Time for a Bright-Line Rule at the Age of Majority
Author: Andrea Jeglum
Published: Fall 2021
In this article, published in the Wisconsin Journal of Law, Gender & Society, the author traces the legal and social history of laws allowing for child marriage in the United States, as well as attempts by states to protect children without fully ending child marriage. She concludes that these efforts to limit child marriage through parental consent or judicial approval conditions have failed, and that the only viable way to address the issue is for each state to set it’s minimum marriage age at the age of majority. Read more.
Mapping the Field of Child Marriage: Evidence, Gaps, and Future Directions From a Large-Scale Systematic Scoping Review, 2000–2019
Authors: Manahil Siddiqi, M.P.H. and Margaret E. Green, Ph.D.
Publication: March 1, 2022
This comprehensive survey of global research into child marriage, conducted in multiple languages, reveals a number of important trends in global efforts to study and address child marriage around the world. In particular the authors find that child marriage is not most-studied in the countries where it is most prevalent – in fact several of the countries with the highest prevalence of child marriage are also among the places where the issue is least studied. Read more.
