Child, Early and Forced Marriage Ending and Preventing Forced Marriage

A/HRC/RES/53/23View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the Human Rights Council, under agenda item 3 Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development, published in 2023.

Who cites this mandate in the budget?

1 entity

Entity	(Sub-)Programme	Title	Total mandates cited	Expenditure
	Programme 20	Human rights	433

Historical expenditure covers the complete programme or subprogramme, not this mandate. For an overview of all UN entities and programmes, see UN entities and programmes.

Who cites this mandate in the budget?

1 entity

Entity	(Sub-)Programme	Title	Total mandates cited	Expenditure
	Programme 20	Human rights	433	—

Historical expenditure covers the complete programme or subprogramme, not this mandate. For an overview of all UN entities and programmes, see UN entities and programmes.

What subjects does this mandate have?

12 subjects

Accountability Crime Prevention Early Marriage Economic Aspects Forced Marriage Gender Equality Gender-Based Violence Girls Guidelines Women's Education Women's Health Women's Rights

What’s in this document?

37 operative paragraphs

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:

Addressing the root causes of gender inequality in such a way that it leads to their elimination, including structural, institutional, multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination against women and girls, patriarchal values and structures, discriminatory social norms, gender stereotypes, perceptions, customs, attitudes and behaviours, the socioeconomic drivers of violence and unequal power relations, which perpetuate forced marriage;

Eliminating discrimination against all women and girls in all matters relating to marriage and its dissolution and promoting women’s and girls’ equality in law and in practice in family life, by opposing all forms of marriage that constitute a violation or abuse of the human rights of women and girls and their well-being and dignity;

Respecting, protecting and fulfilling the human rights of all women and girls to have control over, and to decide freely and responsibly on, matters relating to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination and violence, and with respect to their bodily integrity, autonomy and agency, and adopting and accelerating the implementation of laws, policies and programmes that protect and enable the enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms, including reproductive rights;

Taking immediate and effective action to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence, including sexual and gender-based violence, such as domestic and intimate partner violence, marital rape, dowry-related violence and crimes committed against women and girls in the name of so-called “honour”;

Repealing or amending laws that, directly or indirectly, allow forced marriage, including any provisions that may enable, justify or lead to child, early or forced marriage, including forced marriage, and removing any institution or practice whereby a woman or girl, without the right or ability to refuse, is promised or given in marriage in return for payment, whereby the husband of a woman, or his family or the community, has the right to transfer her to another person for value received or otherwise or whereby a woman or girl, upon the death of her husband, is liable to be inherited by another person;

Removing any provisions that may enable perpetrators of rape, sexual exploitation and abuse, abduction, trafficking in persons or slavery-like practices to escape prosecution and punishment by marrying their victims, and urges States to engage traditional and religious leaders and actors, among others, to eliminate the misuse of traditional practices to resolve sexual and gender-based violence incidents through marriage;

Incorporating gender and age considerations into all anti-trafficking efforts, recognizing that certain efforts against trafficking in persons currently lack these considerations, which are needed to effectively differentiate between and respond to the risks faced by women and girls, who are disproportionately targeted by traffickers for the purposes of sexual exploitation, forced marriage, forced labour and other forms of exploitation, including domestic servitude, and also recognizing that vulnerabilities to such targeting arise from failures to remedy systemic gender inequality and discrimination;

Developing and implementing measures to address the increased risk of vulnerability among women and girls to forced marriage, including those women and girls who are hardest to reach and are already married, in particular adolescent girls, in consultation with and with the participation of women and girls, and integrating them into humanitarian responses, from the early stages of humanitarian emergencies, and protecting women and girls from all forms of violence, including sexual and gender-based violence and exploitation during humanitarian emergencies, situations of forced displacement, armed conflict, natural hazard and public health emergencies, including by ensuring their access to such services as health and education, providing inclusive and equitable quality education, and strengthening follow-up and interventions to prevent and eliminate forced marriage in humanitarian settings and to address the needs of those affected;

Upholding all the human rights and fundamental freedoms of women and girls with disabilities, and recognizing that disability can increase the risk of child, early and forced marriage, and the importance of ensuring that services and programmes designed to prevent and eliminate child, early and forced marriage are inclusive of, and accessible to, women and girls with disabilities;

Introducing special provisions to protect the rights of women and girls in forced marriages, including by helping them to leave a forced marriage, especially in relation to family property, access to land and inheritance, matrimonial property, the custody of children and the right to marry, including after a divorce, providing support to victims’ dependents and the members of their immediate families, and ensuring that no woman or girl is forced to waive the enjoyment of her economic rights in order to obtain a divorce, taking into consideration potential short- and long-term economic support needs for children or women following the dissolution of forced marriages and the return of dowry payments or bride price;

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:

Adopting measures to ensure equal access for girls to inclusive and equitable quality education, to remove political, legal, social, practical, structural, cultural, economic, institutional and religious barriers, to eliminate discriminatory laws and practices that prevent them from having access to, completing or continuing their education, including the transitions from primary to secondary education to and higher levels of education, and providing incentive mechanisms to this end, to develop and implement programmes, as appropriate, that are specifically aimed at eliminating gender disparities in enrolment and gender-based bias and stereotypes in education systems, curricula and materials, whether derived from any discriminatory practices, social or cultural attitudes or legal and economic circumstances, to ensure continued efforts to eliminate all forms of school-related violence against girls, including online, and to eliminate obstacles faced by them in gaining access to and using information and communications technology, and reaffirming the importance of the right to education as key to the empowerment and autonomy of all women and girls and for ensuring equality and non-discrimination;

Ensuring equal access to free and quality primary and secondary education, including catch-up and literacy education for those who have not received formal education, have left school early or were forced to leave school because of, inter alia, marriage, pregnancy and/or childbirth, re-entry policies and vocational training and skills development, which empower young women and girls subjected to forced marriage to make informed decisions about their lives, employment, economic opportunities and health, including through scientifically accurate, age-appropriate comprehensive education, relevant to cultural contexts, that targets gender stereotypes and promotes the values of gender equality and non-discrimination, including positive masculinities, and that provides adolescent girls and boys and young women and men, in and out of school, consistent with their evolving capacities, with information on sexual and reproductive health, gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment, human rights, physical, psychological and pubertal development and power in relationships between women and men, to enable them to build self-esteem and informed decision-making, communication and risk-reduction skills and to develop respectful relationships, in full partnership with young persons, parents, legal guardians, caregivers, educators and health-care providers, in order to contribute to ending forced marriage;

Ensuring that married and/or pregnant adolescents and young mothers, as well as single, divorced, separated or widowed mothers, can continue and complete their education after childbirth, marriage or the dissolution of marriage by designing, implementing and, where applicable, revising educational policies and programmes to allow them to remain in and return to school and to develop livelihood opportunities through access to technical and vocational education and training and life skills education, including financial literacy, and by providing them with access to health-care services and social services and support, including childcare and breastfeeding facilities and crèches, and to education programmes with accessible locations, flexible schedules and distance education, including e-learning, bearing in mind the important role and responsibilities of fathers, including young fathers, in this regard;

Encouraging the proper, systematic and regular training of teachers and school officials on human rights, gender equality and child protection and on providing a safe and supportive school environment for their students and that they be held accountable when they violate or abuse the rights of children who are in school or perpetrate sexual and gender-based violence in and around schools, including in connection with forced marriage;

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:

Ensuring the equal rights of all women and girls with regard to the ownership, acquisition, management, administration, enjoyment and disposition of property and to inheritance and their access on an equal basis with men and boys to social protection, childcare services and direct financial services, and promoting freedom of movement, women’s equal access to full and productive employment and decent work and their full, equal and meaningful political participation and leadership and rights to inherit, own and control resources, land and productive measures;

Putting in place gender-responsive social protection mechanisms that promote women’s economic security, adopting measures to address the feminization of poverty and to recognize, reduce and redistribute the disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work borne by women and girls, including by making efforts to change the roles in domestic work and care responsibilities, and addressing the discrimination, gender inequality, including gender stereotypes and harmful social norms, attitudes and behaviours and unequal power relations in which women and girls are viewed as subordinate to men and boys that are at the root of these imbalances;

Investing in family-oriented policies that promote women’s and girls’ equality and that confront socioeconomic inequalities and social exclusion that can lead to the poverty of individuals and households, addressing the multidimensional aspects of poverty, advancing the protection capacities of communities and families, with the best interests of the child taken as a primary consideration, focusing on education, health, employment, social security, livelihoods and social cohesion, paying special attention to gender-responsive social protection measures, child allowances for parents and pension benefits for older persons and protecting, supporting and empowering children, including girls, in child-headed households;

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:

Developing and enforcing policies and legal frameworks on, and strengthening, health systems, including health information systems, that ensure uninterrupted, universally accessible, acceptable, affordable and available quality, gender-responsive, adolescent-friendly and disability-inclusive health services, sexual and reproductive health-care services, information, education and commodities, HIV and AIDS prevention, testing, treatment and care, mental health services and psychosocial support, equitable sanitation and hygiene for all, including menstrual health and hygiene and nutrition interventions and the prevention and treatment of, and care for, obstetric fistula and other obstetric complications, while respecting free and informed consent, confidentiality and privacy, by providing the continuum of services, including family planning, prenatal and postnatal care, skilled birth attendants, emergency obstetric care and postpartum care, free from mistreatment and violence, and repealing discriminatory laws relating to third-party authorization for health information and health-care services;

Ensuring continuity and further strengthening protection and support services for women and girls, in particular, adolescent girls, who experience all forms of violence, including domestic violence, especially women and girls at risk of forced marriage and girls and women affected by this harmful practice, and designating protection shelters, hotlines and help desks, health, support and social protection services and legal protection and support as essential services available to all women and girls, in addition to establishing safeguarding measures and raising awareness among and providing training for the police, members of the judiciary, first responders, health workers and education and child services staff;

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.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

Who cites this mandate in the budget?

Who cites this mandate in the budget?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

Table of contents

Who cites this mandate in the budget?