Somalia

45% of girls in Somalia marry before the age of 18 and 8% marry before the age of 15.

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

In Somalia, child marriage is exacerbated by:

● Family honour: Somali social norms are very sensitive about the protection of girls before marriage. Parents often marry off their daughters to protect them from sexual abuse on their way to and from school.

● Female Genital Mutilation and Cutting (FGM/C): Somalia is one of few countries in the world where it is estimated that almost all of women and girls have experienced Female Genital Mutilation and Cutting (FGM/C). This is strongly linked to attempts to control female sexuality and prepare girls for marriage.

● Religion: As reported by UNICEF, Islamic leaders do not see protecting girls from child marriage as a priority and they avoid speaking out against forced marriages. Some leaders support the practice by reportedly giving permission for child marriages to take place.

● Gender norms and power dynamics: About 30% of girls aged 15 to 24 marry husbands who are 10 or more years older, and about 1 in 5 women aged between 15 and 49 are in polygynous marriages. This contributes to placing women and girls in a subservient position.

● Peer pressure: When one girl in a class or community marries, others often follow. This sometimes results in girls getting divorced, moving back home with their parents and “damaging” future marriage prospects.

● Adolescent pregnancy: According to data collected by the UN Population Fund, from 2004-2020, 118 per 1000 girls and women aged 15-19 gave birth. Somalia faces high and increasing rates of adolescent pregnancy which is a consequence of child 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 contexts, often in times of crisis, families see child marriage as a way to cope with greater economic hardship and to protect girls from increased violence.

For 3 decades, conflict between the military and non-state armed groups, in particular Al-Shabaab, has been the main cause of internal displacement in Somalia. Somalia is also prone to severe drought conditions which adds on to widespread poverty and food insecurity in the country.

As of 2023, there are approximately 8.25 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in Somalia, of which 1.5 million are children under the age of 5 and 3.6 million are girls and boys between the ages of 5-17 years. In addition to natural disasters and food insecurity, child marriage in Somalia is exacerbated by:

● Armed conflict: Some Somali girls are raped by armed groups and forced to marry fighters. The UN reports that Al-Shabaab (an Islamist insurgent group based in Somalia) has been particularly complicit in forcing girls into marriage. Human Rights Watch highlights that Al-Shabaab’s members use child marriage as a tactic to impose a harsh version of Sharia on every aspect of the personal lives of women and girls. Many refugee families cited leaving Somalia due to fear of forced marriage, and one girl was decapitated because she resisted marriage. In 2020, the UN documented over 100 cases of conflict-related sexual violence against girls.

● Displacement: Girls living in internally displaced people’s (IDP) camps are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence and forced marriage.

Somalia 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 Voluntary National Review at the 2022 High Level Political Forum. The government reported that through the Gender-Based Violence Information Management System (GBVIMS), of the 7,200 reported cases, 72% were incidences of intimate partner violence. The government noted that cases of gender-based violence are on the rise and is exacerbated by drought conditions, floods, insecurity, displacement and violence.

Somalia co-sponsored the 2014 UN General Assembly resolution and the 2013 Human Rights Council resolution on child, early and forced marriage. In 2014, Somalia signed a joint statement at the Human Rights Council calling for a resolution on child marriage.

Somalia ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 2015, which the Committee on the Rights of the Child has interpreted to recommend the establishment of a minimum age of marriage of 18. Somali is one of the few countries that has not signed or ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which obligates states to ensure free and full consent to marriage.

In 1991 Somalia signed the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, including Article 21 regarding the prohibition of child marriage.

In 2006 Somalia signed the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, including Article 6 which sets the minimum age for marriage as 18.

During its 2022 review, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child raised with concern the prevalence of child marriage for children below the age of 15 years. The Committee recommended that the government raise the minimum legal age of marriage to 18 years with no exceptions. The Committee recommended that the government accelerate an action plan to combat FGM/C and child marriage and to develop awareness-raising campaigns on the harmful effects of child marriage and FGM/C. In light of the increase in adolescent pregnancies and child marriages, the Committee also raised with concern that the implementation of the National Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child, Adolescent Health and Nutrition Strategic Plan for 2019-2023 has been hindered.

During its 2021 UN Committee on the Rights of the Child State Party report, the Government of Somalia raised that measures were being taken to eliminate harmful practices and priority was given to eliminating child marriage and harmful practices. In this report, the government acknowledged that approximately half of Somali women are married by the age of 20 and give birth to their first child by the age of 21, and 14% of women aged 15-19 had already given birth to their first child.

During its 2021 Universal Periodic Review, Somalia raised that in 2017, the Office of the Attorney General established a sexual and gender-based violence unit with trained special prosecutors. The Attorney General’s office aims to expand sexual and gender-based violence units to increase effective case management and monitoring.

During its 2016 Universal Periodic Review, Somalia agreed to examine recommendations to counteract serious human rights violations of women and girls, including child marriage.

In 2019, at the Nairobi Summit on ICPD25, the Somali Government committed to zero tolerance for gender-based violence by addressing vulnerability factors, especially among internally-displaced people, and strengthening policy and legal frameworks.

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

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

The Somali Ministry of Women and Family Affairs has drafted legislation to protect children from child marriage and FGM/C. In 2019, Somalia reported to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child that the Sexual Offences Bill, which is currently on the floor of parliament, provides sanctions for child marriages.

The Child Rights Bill prohibits harmful practices including child marriage and FGM. This Bill also addresses child abuse in all its forms, including abuse against children with disabilities.

Under the Ministry of Women and Human rights Development (MoWHRD), several laws are in the drafting stage that aim to enhance children’s rights in Somalia and seek to incorporate the Convention on the Rights of the Child into national laws. These include:

Sexual Offences Bill

Anti-FGM Bill

Disability Bill

Juvenile Justice Bill

In 2018, in Puntland, a Zero Tolerance Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting Policy has been developed and a draft bill adopted by the cabinet and Puntland parliament.

The National Development Plan (2017–2019) also stated the government intention of eliminating child marriage.

The Ministry of Justice has trained some religious leaders on child marriage awareness and has provided them with templates to ensure proper documentation and action plans on minimising child marriages. It is also working to register sheikhs (religious leaders) and provide licenses for the performance of nikahs (“marriage” in Islamic law) to keep track of and control child marriage.

The provisional Somalian Constitution (2012) states that a “marriage shall not be legal without the free consent of both the man and the woman, or if either party has not reached the age of maturity.” However, the Constitution does not define the age of maturity meaning that girls could marry at any age under 18.

In addition, according to the Family Code (1975), the legal age for marriage in Somalia is 18 for both men and women, but it provides exceptions for girls to be married at age 16 or younger with a guardian’s consent.