Peru

14.1% of girls in Peru are married or in a union before their 18th birthday and 2% are married or in a union before the age of 15.

In Peru, rather than a formal marriage, the majority of unions are informal.

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

In Peru, CEFMU areexacerbated by:

Level of education:According to 2014 DHS data, girls with no education marry at the age of 17 on average. The younger a girl marries, the more likely it is that she will drop out of school early and thereby have a low level of educational attainment and future employment opportunities.

Adolescent pregnancy: In Peru, early childbearing has been found to be intrinsically related to CEFMU and cohabitation. In the majority of cases, the latter is a consequence of the former. Between 2015 – 2020, for girls between the ages of 15 – 19, the adolescent birth rate in Peru was 44%. For women between the ages of 20 – 24, between 2015 – 2020, 16% had given birth before the age of 18.

Poverty: Girls from Peru’s poorest households are more likely to marry before the age of 18 than those living in the richest households. CEFMU is more prevalent in rural areas, where poverty is widespread and there are no opportunities. Statistics from 2017 indicate that 40% of girls between the ages of 15 – 17 who were from the poorest households were married, cohabiting or in an informal union.

Harmful practices: In rural communities with Inca ancestry, Servinacuy, which is an agreement where a man offers gifts to the girl’s family in exchange for cohabitating with her before entering an official union.

Gender-based violence: According to a 2019 study, many girls enter into early unions as a way to escape violence at home. Gender norms play a big role in enabling gender-based violence and is also used as a justification for child marriage, cohabitation and adolescent pregnancy. Between January - December 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 35,661 reported cases of violence against children, 15,447 reported cases of psychological violence, 10,475 cases of physical violence and 9,582 cases of sexual violence. A majority of the cases (46%) reported were by victims between the ages of 12 – 17 years old, 37% for children between ages 6 – 11 and 17% for children between 0 – 5 years old. In a National Study conducted in 2019, 59% of Peruvians found violence against children socially acceptable and 22% thought it was better not to intervene in cases of child sexual abuse.

Sexual exploitation and child trafficking: Peru is considered a source, transit and destination country for child trafficking. In 2020, there were 394 reported cases of trafficking, 140 of which involved girls under the age of 18 and 26 cases involving boys under the age of 18. Venezuelan migrant children living in Peru and children from indigenous communities are at an increased risk of being exploited by criminal gangs.

Ethnicity: Peru is home to 55 different indigenous groups living across the Amazonian and Anden regions. Children from these communities are at a increased risk of exploitation due to poverty and barriers in accessing education and health care services. Statistics from the 2017 national census found that 40% of Amazonian indigenous women between 15 – 49 years old were married before the age of 18. CEFMU is particularly prevalent among indigenous communities in Peru, including the Napo. In some indigenous communities, the union is arranged by the girl’s father and community authorities, giving little weight to the wishes of the girl and her mother.

Poor implementation of laws: A 2019 study found that, while CEFMU is illegal in Peru, cases are rarely reported to avoid “an scandal”, and when they are, the authorities will encourage the girl’s family and the man to reach an (economic) agreement outside the justice system.

COVID-19: Peru had some of the highest COVID-19 pandemic deaths in the world. An academic study from 2021 found that 136,572 children had lost a primary or secondary caregiver due to COVID-19. This increased vulnerability coupled with prolonged school closures left vulnerability children exposed to sexual exploitation, trafficking, gender-based violence and early marriage.

Humanitarian settings can encompass a wide range of situations, before, during and after natural disasters, conflicts and epidemics. They exacerbate poverty, insecurity, and lack of access to services such as education, factors which all drive child marriage. While gender inequality is a root cause of child marriage in both stable and crisis context, often in times of crisis, families see child marriage as a way to cope in greater economic hardship and to protect girls from increased violence.

Since 2014, political instability in Venezuela has made Peru the primary host country for Venezuelan asylum seekers. The large influx of asylum seekers, coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic has Peru hosting 1.05 million Venezuelan migrants of which over 190,000 are children.

Peru has committed to eliminate child, early and forced marriage by 2030 in line with target 5.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals. The government did not provide an update on progress towards this target during its Voluntary National Review at the 2017 and 2020 High Level Political Forum.

Peru co-sponsored the following Human Rights Council resolutions: the 2013 procedural resolution on child, early and forced marriage, the 2015 resolution on 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, Peru also signed a joint statement at the Human Rights Council calling for a resolution on child marriage.

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

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

Peru ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, which sets a minimum age of marriage of 18, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1982, which obligates states to ensure free and full consent to marriage.

During its 2021 review, the CEDAW Committee welcomes the strengthening of legislation to combat gender-based violence. It raised concern at the increasing rates of gender-based violence, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. It recognised that most of the violence was perpetuated towards indigenous and Afro-Peruvian women, migrant and refugee women and women with disabilities. The Committee recommended that Peru implement a comprehensive strategy to eliminate cultural perceptions surrounding child marriage and stereotypes of women.

In 2016 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child raised concerns that courts may grant exceptions to the minimum age for marriage if a boy or girl are 16 years of age and express their desire to marry. It urged the government to enforce the legal minimum age more effectively.

Peru, 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 to governments to strengthen the respond 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.

Peru ratified the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women (known as the Belém do Pará Convention) in 1996. 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.

Peru, 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.

In 2019, at the Nairobi Summit on ICPD25, Peru committed to zero sexual and gender-based violence and harmful practices, including zero early and forced marriage.

Peru is a pathfinder country for the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children.

Between June and July 2021, the government revised the existing national action plan and renewed them until 2030, namely:

The National Action Plan for Children and Adolescents 2012-2021 – this plan specifically targets child sexual exploitation and trafficking within the travel and tourism industry. However, since the renewal of this plan no official updates on its progress exists.

The National Action Plan Against Human Trafficking 2017-2021 – this plan targets child trafficking for sexual purposes. Since 2018, budgetary cuts and lack of coordination between different government bodies has hindered the plan’s progress.

Since Peru was hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, as of November 2021, the government adopted an emergency decree with a financial assistance scheme of 200 sol ($50 USD) a month for children who lost their primary caregivers due to COVID-19.

In 2020, a law proposal was submitted that seeks to eradicate adolescent marriages. However, the proposal aims only to reverse the modification that allows children over 14 years old to marry, meaning that the minimum age of marriage would revert to 16. This proposal does not consist of any provisions that raise the minimum legal age of marriage to 18 and it does not include any criminal provisions to punish perpetrators who force or induce child marriage.

As a pathfinding country for the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children, in September 2019, the Government of Peru adopted the National Action Plan to Eliminate Violence against Children and Adolescents 2020-2030. The efforts are being led by the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations and is being supported by the Global Partnership to End Violence and UNICEF, among other key stakeholders. The action plan is developed along the INSPIRE strategies and national child protection laws.

The government has two programmes to respond to violence against children:

PP No. 0080 Combating family violence – aims to reduce violence within the family home;

PP No. 0117 Timely attention to children in presumed states of abandonment – aims to ensure that parents or caregivers assume their parental roles.

Although there are no explicit government action plans explicitly addressing child marriage, other government plans that address child marriage drivers include:

National Education Project 2021

National Policy on Gender Equality 2019

Multisectoral Plan for the Prevention of Adolescent Pregnancy 2012-2021

National Plan against Gender-based Violence 2016-2021

Under the Civil Code 1999 the minimum legal age of marriage years is 18 years for girls and boys.

However individuals may marry at 16 years with judicial consent.