Girls Early Marriages

International conventions prohibit child marriage and define eighteen as the age of adulthood. These laws are based on the argument that children and adolescents are not mature enough to make choices about marriage, and that marrying too young can lead to lasting emotional, physical, and psychological harm. Moreover, development experts say child marriage stunts girls' educational opportunities and income-earning prospects, and perpetuates poverty in communities worldwide, inhibiting progress toward national and global development goals and threatening stability. Delaying the age of marriage and investing in girls' futures, they say, can have a multiplier effect that benefits the communities at large.

Program Rational:

Geography of the problem

Child marriage transcends regional and cultural boundaries. Across Palestine, an estimated one in three girls is married beforeturningeighteen, and one in nine before sixteen. Analysts project that if current trends continue, half million Palestinian girls will marry before adulthood within this decade.

The practice persists to varying degrees around the globe. The highest prevalence rates, commonly measured by the percentage of women aged twenty to twenty-four who report being married before eighteen, are found in the developing countries, where an estimated two out of five girls are married as children.

Surveys of child brides conducted by the United Nationsand many nongovernmental agencies paint a broad demographic portrait of young married girls:

• Girls from rural areas are twice as likely to marry as children as those from urban areas.


• Child brides are most likely to be from poor families.Across Palestine, young married girls are most often from the poorest quintile of the income bracket.


• Married girls are generally less educated, either for lack of opportunity or the curtailment of their schooling by early marriage.

In Palestine, disparities in the prevalence of child marriage also lie along religious, ethnic, or regional lines, early marriage is most common amongrural and disadvantaged villages.