Saint Lucia

24% of girls in St Lucia marry or enter in a union before age 18 and 4% marry before age 15.

Child, Early, and Forced Marriage and Unions (CEFMU) occurs in both rural and urban parts of Saint Lucia.

According to UNICEF, Child, Early, and Forced Marriage and Unions (CEFMU) in Saint Lucia frequently takes the form of a “visiting relationship” — an informal union, with a social and sexual relationship but no cohabitation.

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.

There is limited information on CEFMU in Saint Lucia, but available studies show that it is exacerbated by:

Level of education: 23% of women who had no education or only primary level education were married or in a union before the age of 18, compared to 15% who had completed secondary school.

Poverty: A quarter of girls in Saint Lucia’s poorest households were married or in a union before the age of 18, compared to only 13% in the richest households.

Saint Lucia 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 2019 Voluntary National Review at the High Level Political Forum but there was no mention of child marriage. The government has not submitted a Voluntary National Review in any High Level Political Forum since.

Saint Lucia ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1993, 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 1982, which obligates states to ensure free and full consent to marriage.

During its 2020 Universal Periodic Review, Saint Lucia was shown to have an inconsistency between the age of criminal responsibility (12 years old) and the age of adulthood (18 years old, as per the Child Justice Act). Marriage below the age of 18 is legal with parental consent. It was recommended that the minimum age of consent to marriage be increased to 18 years, unconditionally.

Saint Lucia, 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 respects evolving capacities and progressive autonomy.

Saint Lucia 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.

Saint Lucia, 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.

Saint Lucia is a partner country of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE).

Under the Civil Code 1956, the minimum age of marriage for girls and boys is 18 years.

However, they can also marry at 16 years or over with parental consent and permission of the Attorney-General. Marriage below the age of 16 is outlawed by Article 81 of the Civil Code.