Barbados

29% of girls in Barbados marry or enter a union before age of 18 and 8% marry before the age of 15.

Child, Early, and Forced Marriage and Unions (CEFMU) are most prevalent in St. Michael, St. James, St. George and St. Thomas.

According to UNICEF, CEFMU in Barbados usually takes the form of a “visiting relationship” — an informal union, with a social and sexual relationship but no cohabitation. Over 40% of girls between 15-19 are married or in a “visiting relationship.”

Child, Early, and Forced Marriage and Unions (CEFMU) is driven by gender inequality and the belief that women and girls are somehow inferior to men and boys.

There is limited information on CEFMU in Barbados, but available data shows that it is driven by:

Level of education:22% of women who had only completed primary school were married or in a union before the age of 18, compared to 13% who had completed higher education.

Poverty:19% of women living in Barbados’ poorest households were married or in a union as children, compared to only 13% of those living in the richest households.

Barbados 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 2020 and 2023 Voluntary National Review at the High Level Political Forum, but there was no mention of child marriage.

Barbados ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, which the Committee on the Rights of the Child has interpreted to recommend the establishment of a minimum age of marriage of 18, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1980, which obligates states to ensure free and full consent to marriage.

In 2017 the CEDAW Committee raised concerns about reports of girls running away from home due to child marriage, and a lack of information on causes and measures taken by Barbados to address the problem.

In 2017, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended Barbados to amend its Family Law Act to remove any exception to the minimum age of marriage, which is set at 18 years.

Barbados, as a member of the Organization of American States (OAS), is bound to the Inter American System of Human Rights, which recognises the right of men and women of marriageable age to marry and calls on governments to strengthen the response to address gender-based violence and discrimination, including early, forced and child marriage and unions, from a perspective that respected evolving capacities and progressive autonomy.

Barbados ratified the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women (known as the Belém do Pará Convention) in 1995. In 2016, the Follow-up Mechanism to the Belém do Pará Convention (MESECVI) recommended State Parties to review and reform laws and practices to increase the minimum age for marriage to 18 years for women and men.

Barbados, as a member of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), adopted the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development in 2013, which recognises the need to address the high levels of adolescent pregnancy in the region as usually associated with the forced marriage of girls. In 2016, the Montevideo Strategy for Implementation of the Regional Gender Agenda was also approved by the ECLAC countries. This Agenda encompasses commitments made by the governments on women’s rights and autonomy and gender equality during the last 40 years in the Regional Conferences of Women in Latin America and the Caribbean. The agenda reaffirms the right to a life free of all forms of violence, including forced marriage and cohabitation for girls and adolescents.

The legal minimum age of marriage is 18 for both women and men.

However, individuals between the ages of 16 and 18 can be married with the consent of their parents.