South Sudan

The most recent available data from 2010 shows that 52% of girls in South Sudan are married before their 18th birthday and 9% are married before the age of 15.

57% of the South Sudanese population are under the age of 18.

Pre-conflict child marriage rates do not vary significantly among girls of different education levels, wealth indexes or rural or urban locality. Current rates could be higher due to ongoing conflict, displacement, and food shortages. All of South Sudan is considered a high-risk area for child marriage by UNFPA and UNICEF.

Oxfam estimated in 2019 that in the town of Nyal, an area that has bordered some of the most brutal fighting in South Sudan’s conflict, 71% of girls were married before the age of 18.

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

Rates of child marriage were already high before the conflict began, but high levels of instability, economic decline, erosion of services and malnutrition may have contributed to increase child marriage in South Sudan. Exacerbating drivers of child marriage in South Sudan include:

Poverty: Child marriage is used as a coping mechanism in response to economic and food insecurity. Families from the poorest households in South Sudan marry off daughters in order to receive dowry (payments in the form of money, gifts or cattle, from future husbands). Due to instability, cattle raiding has become more common in South Sudan and some families are unable to feed their children. Cattle is used as a currency in marriage transactions and many teenage girls are forced into marriage so their families can receive cows and survive. Some girls are “born so that people can eat”.

Level of education: South Sudan is in a learning crisis with an estimated 3.1 million children in need of educational support. It remains the highest proportion of out-of-school children in the world. Increased school dropout rates push young girls towards marriage and early pregnancies. In 2019, 17% of girls were enrolled in pre-primary education, 58% in primary education and 25% in secondary education. The worst affected areas in South Sudan are Eastern and Central Equatoria, Lakes, Unity, Upper Nile and Jonglei.

Sexual violence against women and girls: In 2021, it was estimated that 2.3 million children were at risk of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation. The UN Human Rights Council has qualified sexual and gender-based violence, including forced marriage, as a central characteristic of the conflict, used as a tactic of warfare by all parties to spread terror. It is estimated that 65% of women and girls in South Sudan have experienced sexual and/or physical violence in their lifetime. Misconceptions about the physical protection offered by marriage has led to an increase in early and forced marriages. In addition, according to customary laws, in the case of rape of an unmarried girl, she may be forced to marry the perpetrator, who is expected to pay a bride price to her family.

Gender norms: Community expectations are widespread that girls should be married as they reach puberty and start childbearing early in order to maximise the number of children a woman will have over her lifetime. Discriminatory attitudes deem women and girls as “second class citizens” with specific roles as wives and mothers.

Family honour: Some families marry off their daughters in order to shield them from pre-marital sex, which brings shame to families and lowers the amount of dowry girls can fetch when married.

Weak legal frameworks: South Sudan lacks a strong legal framework and existing laws are poorly enforced. Perpetrators are able to continue forcing children into marriages with no repercussions.

COVID-19: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on some of the poorest households and has exacerbated the vulnerability of children. The pandemic exposed vulnerable families to loss of financial income pushing them further into poverty and exclusion. School closures, with 2.8 million children in South Sudan out of school before the pandemic, pushed a further two million children out of school, exposing the vulnerability of young girls making them more susceptible to abuse and 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 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.

Conflict in South Sudan has caused mass displacement among civilians. South Sudan remains one of the largest refugee crises in the world. 7.5 million South Sudanese are in need of humanitarian assistance, 4.1 million children, and nearly 1.6 million people remain internally displaced and 2.3 million are living as refugees. Throughout 2020, new displacement of children and families occurred following clashes between armed forces and intercommunal fighting, COVID-19, and the plummeting financial situation. Data from 2019 in Nyal, northern South Sudan indicates that 70% of girls were married before the age of 18, which is significantly higher than the national average of 48% pre-conflict. Child marriage has increased significantly following years of conflict in South Sudan. This unrest drives poverty and hunger, which increases the risk of child marriage as families view marriage as an escape from poverty.

South Sudan remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for a child, where one in 10 children die before their 5th birthday.

Armed conflict: Many girls and women have been forced into marriage and prostitution during South Sudan’s conflict in order to survive. Girls and women with disabilities are at particular risk.

Displacement and orphanhood: Among refugees and internally displaced people, orphan, separated and unaccompanied adolescent girls are at increased risk of child marriage. It is estimated that over 7,000 children are in need of family tracing as 1.6 million people have been separated from their families, more than half of them being children. Displaced families use negative coping mechanisms to address their needs such as using child marriage. Since the outbreak of violence in December 2013, approximately 26,180 cases of unaccompanied and separated, missing and vulnerable children have been documented, 12,214 of which are girls and 13,970 boys. Extended family members often identify marriage as the only solution for an adolescent girl who is separated from her primary caregivers. Child marriage has also been reported as a way to integrate into the host communities.

South Sudan has committed to eliminate 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 to date.

South Sudan co-sponsored the 2013, 2014 and 2018 UN General Assembly resolutions on child, early and forced marriage, and the 2013 Human Rights Council resolution on child, early and forced marriage. In 2014, South Sudan signed a joint statement at the Human Rights Council calling for a resolution on child marriage.

South Sudan acceded to the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 2015, which sets a minimum age of marriage of 18, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 2015, which obligates states to ensure free and full consent to marriage.

During its 2016 Universal Periodic Review, South Sudan supported recommendations to strengthen efforts to eradicate child marriage. The government highlighted that it is particularly difficult to combat child marriage and prevent girls from dropping out of school in states such as the Upper Nile, where most schools had been destroyed and were yet to be rebuilt.

In 2013 South Sudan signed, but has not yet ratified the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, including Article 21 regarding the prohibition of child marriage.

In 2013 South Sudan signed, but has not yet ratified, 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.

South Sudan is one of 20 countries which has committed to ending child marriage by the end of 2020 under the Ministerial Commitment on comprehensive sexuality education and sexual and reproductive health services for adolescents and young people in Eastern and Southern Africa.

In 2019, at the Nairobi Summit on ICPD25, the government of South Sudan committed to the goal of zero harmful practices, including child marriage by ensuring that, by end 2020, all states have declared and put in place mechanisms to end child marriage, and by working with civil society organisations.

South Sudan is one of the countries where the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)/DREAMS Initiative is working to reduce rates of HIV among adolescent girls and young women.

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

Due to the damaging impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on child protection in South Sudan, UNICEF, through the flagship Communities Care Programme expanded its work to address child marriage, adolescent pregnancies and sexual violence. Prior to the pandemic, this programme aimed to promote gender equality and positive social transformation norms and reached over 800,000 people in awareness-raising activities.

In 2021, the Protection Cluster will produce regular analysis and monitoring throughout South Sudan, one of the areas of monitoring being the percentage of households reporting fear of GBV and child marriage.

The government of South Sudan in 2020, re-committed itself to the Comprehensive Action Plan to End & Prevent All Grave Violations Against Children on all six grave violations. One of the main priorities is the implementation of child protection services to prevent and avoid sexual violence against girls and prevent early child marriage.

In 2020, UNICEF continued to work closely with the Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Welfare in implementing its Gender Action Plan 2019-2021 which advocates to end child marriage. Further to this, discussions have taken place with key stakeholders, faith leaders, schools and communities on girls’ education, child marriage, sexual and gender-based violence, and menstrual hygiene.

In October 2020, a campaign with the slogan “some things are not fit for children - marriage is one of them” was launched, highlighting the damaging impacts of child marriage on girls education, development and future.

The Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Welfare led the development of a Strategic National Action Plan (SNAP) (2017-2030) to End Child Marriage in South Sudan. The development of the action plan was spearheaded by a National Task Force to End Child Marriage, and the National Gender-Based Violence Sub-Cluster and the Child Protection Sub-Cluster, with technical and financial support from UNICEF and UNFPA. The development process also involved the Ministry of Health, Ministry of General Education and Instruction, and the Ministry of Justice, and many non-governmental stakeholders.

The National Action Plan 2015-2020 on UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security and Related Resolutions include strategic objectives to enact and implement laws to eliminate violence against women and girls, including child marriage.

The National Girls’ Education Strategy (2018-2022) aims to address the major obstacles to girls’ education.

Special protection units have also been established at several police stations to enable women and girls to report cases of gender-based violence.

The legal framework around the minimum age of marriage is not clear in South Sudan. The 2008 Child Act defines “child” as someone under the age of eighteen years and includes provisions designed to protect children from being forced into marriage.

The Transitional Constitution, which came into force at its independence in 2011, does not set a minimum age of marriage. Instead it states that every person had the right to marry a person of the opposite sex and that no marriage shall be entered into without free and full consent.

The Penal Code does not criminalise those who procure child marriage but does not contain a provision to criminalise “kidnapping or abducting a woman to compel her to get married”. The definition of rape and sexual intercourse in the Penal Code remains unclear as under the Code, the age of sexual consent is 18 and excludes the definition of rape by a married couple.

Different ethnic groups have customary laws that may contradict national laws and that often discriminate against women. Customary courts are accessible, familiar and are therefore used more often. The views of the customary courts do not usually enforce the rules in the Child Act. In these courts girls can be married by the time they reach puberty rather than 18.

In July 2019, a court in South Sudan annulled a child marriage. This could, according to activists, set a precedent for other girls in the country to make illegal marriages entered at a young age.