( Spanish) – The Colombian Congress approved this Wednesday a law that prohibits the marriage of minors. The measure, which seeks to protect the rights and development opportunities of people under 18 years of age, will be sent to President Gustavo Petro for sanction, the Senate reported in a statement.
The legislation establishes that in Colombia marriages or unions in which one or two of the parties are minors will be prohibited, and that a national program must also be created to address the life projects of girls, boys and adolescents, according to with a summary of the proposal published on the House of Representatives website.
The project was presented before the Colombian House of Representatives in 2023, promoted by legislators Karen López Salazar, Jennifer Pedraza Sandoval, Alexandra Vásquez Ochoa, John Jairo González Agudelo, María Fernanda Carrascal Rojas and Juan Carlos Vargas Soler. It was approved this year and then went to the Senate, where this Wednesday it also received approval.
The law was promoted with the slogan “They are girls, not wives” because, in particular, it seeks to prevent girls from being forced to marry and being exposed to suffering different types of violence or being kept away from opportunities for education or development, as argued during the session Senator Clara López Obregón, from the ruling coalition Historical Pact.
“Here we are doing something civilizing because minors are not sexual objects, but girls, so the prohibitions are general in nature,” López Obregón said, quoted in the Senate statement.
Representative Jennifer Pedraza Sandoval, one of the authors of the proposal, also celebrated the Senate’s approval. On her X account, she noted: “#SonNiñasNoEsposas is now a reality that protects the right of our girls to fully live their childhood.”
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) believes that child marriage remains a widespread practice in the world that puts millions of girls at risk. One of the UN Sustainable Development Goals is for this type of marriage to be eradicated by 2030.
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