Finland

There are 0.06 % women (aged 20-24 years) who marry or in union before age 18, in Finland. Estimated from marriage registry data, refers to formal, registered marriages only

While exemptions to the legal marriageable age of 18 were revoked in 2019, according to the Ministry of Justice, in recent years officials received between 10 - 30 applications each year for a special permit for children to marry.

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

While there is limited information on child marriage in Finland, evidence suggests that child marriage is driven by:

Trafficking: There has been an increase in trafficking cases for the purpose of forced child marriage. In 2019, the National Assistance System for Victims of Human Trafficking assisted 52 people (two boys and 50 girls) who were considered to be victims of trafficking for marriage. It is believed that these marriages took place when the victims were under the legal minimum age.

Migration: A 2014 article reported that a third of applicants of child marriage were foreign nationals. The full extent of the problem among immigrant children is unknown, and the Justice Ministry has stated that it lacks statistics on the number of forced marriages and knowledge of how to deal with this.

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

The government has not submitted a Voluntary National Review in any High Level Political Forum since 2020.

The Finnish government submitted a 2020 Voluntary National Review at the High Level Political Forum. In this review, the government raised that sufficient resources have been secured in order to implement programmes against forced marriages, child marriages and female genital mutilation.

Finland co-sponsored the following Human Rights Council resolutions: the 2013 resolution on child, early and forced marriage, the 2015 resolution to end child, early and forced marriage, recognising that it is a violation of human rights, the 2017 resolution on recognising the need to address child, early and forced marriage in humanitarian contexts, the 2019 resolution on the consequences of child marriage, the 2021 resolution on child, early and forced marriage in times of crisis, including the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2023 resolution on ending and preventing forced marriage. In 2014, Finland also signed a joint statement at the Human Rights Council calling for a resolution on child marriage.

Finland co-sponsored the 2013, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2022 UN General Assembly resolutions on child, early and forced marriage.

Finland ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991, 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 1986, which obligates states to ensure free and full consent to marriage.

During its 2023 review, the CEDAW Committee expressed concern that the Criminal Code did not explicitly criminalise forced marriages and the lack of statistics on child and forced marriages and children born through these marriages. The Committee recommended that the government compile statistical data on children born as a result of child and forced marriage and explicitly criminalize forced marriage in the Criminal Code to ensure that all cases of suspected forced marriage are investigated effectively and prosecuted.

Finland has ratified the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (known as the Istanbul Convention), which considers forced marriage a serious form of violence against women and girls, and legally binds state parties to criminalise the intentional conduct of forcing an adult or child into a marriage.

In May 2020, Finland became a pathfinding country of the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children.

The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare have developed a nationwide multi-sectoral Non-Violent Childhoods Action Plan for the Prevention of Violence Against Children 2020-2025. This plan is aimed at improving the identification of violence against children, especially in vulnerable situations such as female genital mutilation, honour related violence, and extremism.

In 2019, at the Nairobi Summit on ICPD25, Finland reiterated its commitment to promote gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) as central priorities in the country’s foreign policy both multilaterally and bilaterally, and pledged to significantly increase UNFPA core funding in 2020.

The Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs also provides funding to NGOs working on gender equality, for example Plan Finland, who implemented a project in Ethiopia intended to strengthen protection mechanisms and community practices against child marriage in Ethiopia.

According to the Marriage Act 1987 the minimum legal age of marriage is 18 years.

In June 2019, through the Child Custody Act, Finland revoked all special exemptions to the minimum age of marriage.