Bahrain

There is no publicly available government data on child marriage in Bahrain.

Child marriage is driven by gender inequality and the belief that women and girls are somehow inferior to men and boys.

There is very limited information on child marriage in Bahrain, but available evidence indicates that is exacerbated by:

Sexual violence against girls: As reported by the Bahrain Women Union, Article 353 of the Penal Code allows an exemption from punishment for perpetrators of sexual violence who marry their victims. Parents tend to marry their daughters to the perpetrator, sometimes for a brief period, to avoid the scandal and social stigma.

Bahrain has committed to ending child, early and forced marriage by 2030 in line with target 5.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The government submitted a Voluntary National Review at the 2023 High Level Political Forum, however, there was no mention of child marriage.

Bahrain acceded to the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1992, which the Committee on the Rights of the Child has interpreted to recommend the establishment of a minimum age of marriage of 18, and acceded to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 2002, which obligates states to ensure free and full consent to marriage. However, Bahrain entered a reservation to CEDAW, stating that it was committed to implementing the provisions of Articles 2 and 16 of CEDAW without breaching the provisions of the Islamic Shariah.

In 2023, the CEDAW Committee, expressed concern that the minimum age for marriage for girls remains at 16 years and 18 years for boys under Article 20 of the Family Code. The Committee reiterated its recommendations to raise the legal minimum age of marriage to 18 years, with no exceptions for both girls and boys.

During Bahrain’s 2014 review, the CEDAW Committee reiterated recommendations for the government to raise the minimum age of marriage to 18.

In 2019, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child urged Bahrain to amend the Family Act to ensure that the minimum age of marriage is established at 18 years, remove all exceptions that allow marriage under the age of 18, and take all measures necessary to eliminate child marriage in the country.

The minimum legal age of marriage is 16 years for girls. However girls can be married off before 16 years with the permission of the Sharia Court, as per Article 20 of the Family Act. There is no absolute minimum age of marriage below which a Sharia court judge cannot permit marriage.