Colombia takes a historic step in the protection of minors with the elimination of child marriage

Colombia has added to its history a transcendental decision: the elimination of all forms of early unions in which one or both parties or partners are under 18 years of age.

He Congress of the Republic recently approved, after several failed attempts, a bill that modifies an article of the Civil Code that allowed those over 14 years of age to marry with the permission of their parents.

The norm was in force since 1887a reflection of the roots of a practice that has violated the rights of girls, boys and adolescents. In the South American country, one in every five adolescents is in union and one in every 10 girls between 10 and 14 years old lives in these conditions, according to studies by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The approval of the law that prohibits child marriage and de facto marital unions with or between minors made its way with the support of congressmen from different political currents.

Now all that is missing is presidential sanction for it to come into effect. “This approval has been possible because we have gathered the consensus of all political parties. It not only implies prohibition, but also a robust public policy that allows changing customs and generating awareness in the population about the great damage that is done to girls, boys and adolescents with marriages and unions,” highlighted the senator, speaker Clara López. .

An advance for the rights of girls, boys and adolescents

With this determination, Colombia takes a decisive step towards the protection of children’s rights and the fulfillment of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Specifically, Goal number 5, which aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, and includes eliminating all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage, and female genital mutilation, by year 2030.

Bibiana Aido Almagro, representative of UN Women in Colombia, recognized the progress that the ban represents to prevent violations of the human rights of women and girls.

“From UN Women we want to congratulate Colombia for the magnificent news of the approval of the bill that eliminates child marriage, de facto marital unions and early and forced unions. These practices seriously affect the rights to life, health, education and integrity of women and girls and negatively impact their development. “The girls don’t touch each other,” he said.

Breaking circles of poverty

For her part, Andrea Tague Montaña, UNICEF gender and development officer in Colombia, explains that this exception is one of the measures that most favors the future of boys and girls.

“Child marriages and early unions are understood as harmful practices that not only imply gender violence, but also the violation of multiple rights that cause girls, especially girls, to enter circles of poverty. They reinforce discrimination and the idea that the best thing that can happen to them as their only destiny is to get married and have children,” says the officer.

Child marriages and early unionslimit economic empowerment in the transition to adulthood, autonomy and independenceaccording to UNICEF.

Tague warns that by entering into an unequal power relationship with partners six to ten years older, girls have few opportunities to decide whether or not they want to have sex, how many children they would like to have, or what life they want to lead.

“They enter scenarios where, in many cases, they begin to play the roles of adult women. For example, child, domestic and care work is their almost daily work. They are girls who stop studying, who lose their rights by entering into an early union. It is important to call on society not to continue normalizing early unions, that is a violation of rights. Girls do not stop being girls because they are living with a man“adds the UNICEF official.

Courtesy Leonardo Vargas/Press of the Senate of Colombia

Colombia has added a momentous decision to its history: the elimination of all forms of early unions in which one or both members of the couple are under 18 years of age.

Promote life projects

The bill approved in Colombia also establishes actions to strengthen the national public policy on childhood and adolescence through the creation of the national program ‘Dignified life projects for boys, girls and adolescents’.

The program will have a strategy “to prevent child marriages, de facto marital unions and early unions and guarantee measures to restore the rights of girls, boys and adolescents who have been affected by these forms of violence,” states the approved standard.

The strategy should include a special emphasis on remote rural areas, the most vulnerable. Indigenous peoples will also participate in prevention and care programs, within the framework of their autonomy and their own governments.

“Now comes the most important thing and that is that this program manages to address the structural determinants of early unions, which are poverty and lack of education, and that it also manages to link families and communities in the transformation of those social norms. ”says Tague Montaña.

Colombia ranks 20th in the world with respect to the number of girls married or in union before turning 15 years old.and in Latin America and the Caribbean it ranks 11th in adolescents united before turning 18, a reality that is expected to be reversed with the new law.

“This legislative change is a message for Colombian society in the sense that the country should promote and generate conditions and opportunities so that girls can have life projects, so that they can decide autonomously and freely,” concludes the gender officer. from UNICEF.