Germany

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

Over 1000 child marriages have been recorded in recent years, largely due to an influx of migrants entering the country, many of whom were fleeing the Syrian conflict.

While marriage under the age of 18 was made illegal in 2017, it has been reported that the enforcement of the new legislation is inconsistent from one state to another with, for example, 367 cases in Bavaria compared to three in Berlin since the new law took effect.

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

In Germany, child marriage is exacerbated by:

Migration: Child marriage rates within the migrant community is rapidly rising with 819 child marriages registered in 2019. It is believed that 98% of child marriage cases that take place in Germany are for children of Syrian, Iraqi, Turkish, Bulgarian or Afghan origin. 1475 married minors were registered in Germany at the end of July 2016, and 361 of them were under the age of 14. According to the German Interior Ministry, the largest group of married children came from Syria, followed by Afghanistan, Iraq and Bulgaria. In addition, according to German police records from 2012, 70% of forced marriage victims were women aged between 16-21, and about one third of these women were under the age of 18, and the majority had an immigrant background.

Germany has committed to eliminate child, early and forced marriage by 2030 in line with target 5.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals. The government submitted a 2021 Voluntary National Review at the High Level Political Forum but there was no mention of child marriage.

Germany has signed the 2021 Human Rights Council resolution on Child, Early and Forced Marriage in times of crisis, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

Germany co-sponsored the following Human Rights Council resolutions: the 2013 resolution on child, early and forced marriage, the 2015 resolution to strengthen efforts to prevent and eliminate child, early and forced marriage, the 2017 resolution on recognising the need to address child, early and forced marriage in humanitarian contexts, and the 2019 resolution on the consequences of child marriage. In 2014, Germany also signed a joint statement at the Human Rights Council calling for a resolution on child marriage.

Germany co-sponsored the 2013, 2014, 2018 and 2020 UN General Assembly resolutions on child, early and forced marriage

Germany ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1992, which sets a minimum age of marriage of 18, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1985, which obligates states to ensure free and full consent to marriage.

In 2017 the CEDAW Committee raised concerns about legislation enabling marriage under the age of 18 in exceptional cases, and the significant number of girls from migrant families experiencing harmful traditional practices such as Female Genital Mutilation and Cutting (FCM/C).

Germany has ratified the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combatting 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.

At the London Girl Summit in July 2014, the government signed a charter committing to end child marriage by 2020.

In 2017, the Law to Combat Child Marriage came into force. This law was aimed at preventing minors in Germany from entering a marriage and from marriages concluded by minors abroad. This law concludes that marriages concluded abroad are ineffective or null in Germany if at least one spouse was below the age of 16 years at the time of the marriage. Since this law has come into force, 813 child marriages have been reported. Of those, 104 cases have been brought to the court and only 11 were declared invalid.

Germany supports efforts to combat child marriage through its development cooperation. The German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) has previously supported initiatives in Burkina Faso and Guinea. The paper “Population Dynamics in German Development Cooperation” (2013) includes a focus on child marriage.

In June 2017 the German parliament passed a law officially raising the minimum legal age of marriage to 18, with no exceptions.

However, according to the German NGO Terres des Femmes, the efficacy of the new law has been negligible and it is being applied very differently from one state to another. As a result, as of 2019, child marriage reportedly still occurs in Germany.