This month, when the United Nations Human Rights Committee reviews the United States’ commitment to human and political rights, we want to make sure it knows how far behind this country is in stopping the abuse that is child marriage.
Every several years, all U.N. Member States submit a periodic report to the U.N. Human Rights Committee summarizing their implementation of the rights laid out in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a treaty adopted in 1966. These reports are reviewed through an interactive discussion between the State under review and other U.N. Member States, resulting in an “outcome report” and recommendations for improvement. As part of of this process, the Committee considers joint submissions written by stakeholders including NGOs, national human rights institutions, human rights defenders, academic institutions and research institutes.
Together with Equality Now, the ERA Coalition, the US End FGM/C Network and the Alliance for Universal Digital Rights, we have written a joint submission for the Committee, emphasizing the United States’ failure to end child marriage.
In addition to the U.S.’s negligence regarding child marriage, our submission notes other major failings pertaining to the ICCPR, including the lack of an explicit right to equality on the basis of sex, the lack of comprehensive protections against female genital mutilation and the continued prevalence of online sexual exploitation and abuse.
It’s time for the United States to be held accountable.
Read the full joint submission here.
California is clinging to child marriage, despite the world’s promise to end this archaic harmful practice by year 2030 — as our founder/executive director Fraidy Reiss points out in this op-ed article just published in the Sacramento Bee.
California law allows parents to marry off children of any age. More than 8,000 children in California are married each year, giving thousands of get-out-of-jail-free cards to child rapists — since sex with a child under age 18 is a crime in California, unless the perpetrator first marries the child.
Greetings from Lansing, where we just got to watch Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ceremonially sign the legislation to make Michigan the 10th U.S. state where we have helped to end child marriage!
For the first time in history, we have achieved THREE legislative victories in one year — and have now helped to end child marriage in 20 percent of the country. The 7.5 million girls who live in those states can no longer be legally subjected to a human rights abuse and nightmarish legal trap that destroys nearly every aspect of their lives. Only 40 states to go.
You might remember that Gov. Whitmer signed most of the 10-bill package to ban child marriage back in July, but a last-minute procedural snafu held up the rest of the package, so we had to wait until today to celebrate with “Big Gretch.”
Bills to end child marriage died in the legislature during the past three legislative sessions, but we kept fighting. Under the leadership of Sen. Sarah Anthony and Rep. Kara Hope and alongside our allies in the Michigan Coalition to End Child Marriage, we Chained-In at the state capitol, in bridal gowns and chains, to urge legislators to finally take action and end child marriage in Michigan — something we’ve been pushing them to do for six years. We met one-on-one with nearly every Michigan state legislator. We testified at legislative hearings and submitted memos of support, and we recruited our allies to do the same. We compiled in-depth legal research conducted on a pro bono basis by the law firms White & Case and DLA Piper. We launched email campaigns to target state legislators.
And it worked!
Supporters like Roberts Family Foundation, Focus For Health and the Jewish Women’s Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago made our work possible with their generosity. And you made this victory possible, if you took action on our email campaigns, shared our posts on social media or supported us financially.
Until now, dangerous legal loopholes in Michigan allowed parents to enter a child of any age into marriage without any input required from the child, and without any real legal recourse for a child who did not want to marry — and 5,426 children were entered into marriage in Michigan between 2000 and 2021, including 12 children who were not old enough to consent to sex. Some 95% of the children were girls wed to adult men an average of 4.3 years older — often with devastating, lifelong consequences for the girls. There’s a reason the U.S. State Department has called marriage before 18 a “human rights abuse” that destroys almost every aspect of an American girl’s life.
Further, marriage before age 18 creates a nightmarish legal trap: Even the most mature minor faces overwhelming legal and practical barriers if they try to resist or escape a forced marriage.
Michigan has now joined Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and Connecticut in embracing the simple, commonsense legislative solution we are pushing in all 50 U.S. states: Set the marriage age at 18, without exceptions. Such legislation harms no one, costs nothing and ends a human rights abuse.
We promise to keep pushing to make sure the U.S. keeps its promise under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to end forced and child marriage by year 2030.
Your support makes that possible! Please donate now.
The Michigan Coalition to End Child Marriage includes:
A New Jersey appellate court today ruled in favor of a forced marriage survivor — in line with our friend-of-the-court brief on her behalf — and reversed an unconstitutional trial court decision that prohibited her from speaking on social media about her desire to obtain a Jewish religious divorce from her husband, whom she described as abusive.
The victory came after Unchained At Last, a nonprofit working to end forced and child marriage, joined other groups in filing a friend-of-the-court brief with the appellate court to urge justice for the woman, to whom the appellate division referred as L.B.B.
L.B.B. had taken to social media to express anguish that her husband was withholding a get, or a religious divorce. Under Orthodox Jewish law, only a man is allowed to grant a divorce. L.B.B. asked her community to press her husband to release her from their marriage.
Accepting arguments grounded in antisemitic tropes, the trial court determined that L.B.B.’s plea for help was a form of harassment and an incitement to violence, and it ordered L.B.B. to remove her posts and refrain from speaking again about her status as an agunah, or “chained woman” – the term for a woman whose husband refuses to give her a get.
“When L tried to get help to end her suffering as an agunah, the trial court responded by tightening her shackles and silencing her,” said our founder/executive director Fraidy Reiss, herself a forced marriage survivor from the Orthodox Jewish community.
We joined the ACLU of New Jersey, the ACLU, the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance and Sanctuary for Families to file a friend-of-the-court brief that affirmed that the state and federal constitutions protect speech by a person experiencing abuse and seeking her community’s support. The Organization for the Resolution of Agunot and the Shalom Task Force filed a separate brief that explained the social and cultural context of “get refusal” in Orthodox Jewish communities and the ramifications of silencing a person in that situation while they are asking for help.
In a published opinion released today, the three-judge appellate panel ruled unanimously that the First Amendment and its state constitutional analog protect L.B.B.’s right to describe her experiences trapped in a religious marriage and to seek her community’s aid.
“Fortunately, the appellate decision dissolves L.B.B.’s legal binds, freeing her to exercise her First Amendment rights,” Fraidy said.
Not to make the other jobs feel bad, but the dream job you have been waiting for — to use your skills and experience to make the world a better place for girls, women and others — just opened.
We are looking to hire our first-ever Operations Manager to keep our direct-services and systems-change programs running smoothly as we push to end forced and child marriage in the U.S. You might be a good fit for this $90,000-per-year role if you:
Learn more and apply here before someone else steals this exciting and unique opportunity.
We’ve been having a busy summer here at Unchained, and it’s been getting us a lot of media attention! Our efforts to end child marriage across the U.S. have made headlines in The Los Angeles Times, CT Insider, The 19th and The Guardian, to name a few.
Follow us on social media to keep up with our work, and see other ways you can get involved to help us end forced and child marriage in every U.S. state and at the federal level.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer yesterday signed most of the 10-bill package championed by Sen. Sarah Anthony and Rep. Kara Hope to ban child marriage in Michigan.
But due to a last-minute procedural snafu right before the legislature’s summer recess began, four bills in the package have not yet made it to Gov. Whitmer’s desk. When the house returns from recess in the fall, it must vote again on those bills and Gov. Whitmer must sign them — and then Michigan will become the 10th U.S. state where our relentless advocacy has helped to end child marriage!
We wore bridal gowns and chains last week as we gathered outside the California State Capitol to protest child marriage. More than 20 child marriage survivors and allies joined Chain-In Sacramento — made possible by the generous support of the Conboy Foundation — to urge legislators to end a human rights abuse and nightmarish legal trap that destroys girls’ lives.
Speakers included:
Child marriage is an urgent problem in California, where the effective marriage age is zero. More than 8,000 California children marry each year. Yet state legislators have resisted passing simple, commonsense legislation to make the marriage age 18, no exceptions.
One of the goals of a Chain-In is to get media attention to spread our message, and it worked. Chain-In Sacramento garnered headlines in CalMatters, The Sacramento Bee, KNX News (no link available), KQED, SFGate, VigourTimes, Yahoo News, CapRadio and more.
We at Unchained started and now lead a growing national movement to end child marriage in the United States by making the marriage age 18, no exceptions, in all 50 states. One of the many ways we advocate for change is by hosting Chain-Ins like this. Read more here about this form of peaceful protest we invented.
Marriage before 18 can too easily be forced, because minors, even a day before their 18th birthday, have limited legal rights that make resisting or escaping an unwanted marriage nearly impossible. Further, marriage before 18 is a human rights abuse that destroys American girls’ health, education and economic opportunities and greatly increases their risk of experiencing violence.
Let’s seize on the momentum. If you live in California, contact your legislators now and urge them to end child marriage in California. And wherever you live, here are other ways you can get involved.
We hope you are not yet tired of winning, because we just did it again.
After six years of our relentless advocacy, the Michigan legislature just sent the legislation to ban child marriage over its final hurdle and to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s desk.
If (when) Gov. Whitmer signs the legislation into law, Michigan will become the 10th U.S. state — and the third this year! — where we have helped to eliminate a human rights abuse that destroys girls’ lives. #18NoExceptions
We just stood alongside acting Gov. Susan Bysiewicz as she signed the bill we tirelessly promoted for more than six years to make the marriage age in Connecticut 18, no exceptions.
Connecticut is now the ninth U.S. state where we have helped to end child marriage — a stunning victory for the nearly 6.5 million girls who live in those states! Only 41 states to go.
You might remember we Chained-In earlier this month outside the Connecticut State Capitol, in bridal gowns and chains, to protest state senators’ inaction on ending child marriage — and vowed to return every day until the end of the legislative session unless they took action — and it worked! Minutes after our Chain-In ended, senators came outside to tell us they would vote on the bill that day. We sat in the senate chamber in our bridal gowns and chains and watched the senate pass the bill unanimously. (Contrast that with the house vote last month, when 45 representatives voted against ending this human rights abuse.)
Don’t worry if you couldn’t witness this historic victory in person. You can read all about it via the Associated Press, NBC Connecticut, Fox News, Connecticut Mirror, The Hartford Courant, CT Insider, WTNH News8, CT News Junkie, The Messenger and more.
But this victory wasn’t achieved from just one Chain-In. Thanks to the generosity of supporters like the Roberts Family Foundation, Focus For Health and the Jewish Women’s Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago, we advocated to end child marriage in Connecticut for more than six years. We formed the Connecticut Coalition to End Child Marriage. We met one-on-one with nearly every Connecticut state legislator. We testified at legislative hearings and submitted memos of support, and we recruited our allies to do the same. We compiled in-depth legal research conducted on a pro bono basis by the law firms White & Case and DLA Piper. We launched email and social media campaigns to target state legislators.
And we had many strong champions in the Connecticut legislature who ensured this bill passed, including Reps. Jillian Gilchrest, Sarah Keitt, Dominique Johnson and Gary Turco and Sens. Mae Flexer, Herron Gaston, Ceci Maher and Gary Winfield.
Previously, dangerous legal loopholes allowed parents to enter 16- and 17-year-olds into marriage in Connecticut with no real legal recourse for a minor who was forced to marry. Emancipated 16- and 17-year-olds could also marry. Marriage before age 18 creates a nightmarish legal trap: Even the most mature minor faces overwhelming legal and practical barriers if they try to resist or escape a forced marriage. Further, marriage before 18 is recognized as a human rights abuse that destroys almost every aspect of an American girl’s life.
Our research found that more than 1,250 minors, some as young as 14, were married in Connecticut between 2000 and 2021. Most were girls wed to adult men.
Connecticut now joins most of its neighbors in the northeast in eliminating marriage before 18, no exceptions: Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts and Vermont, as well as Minnesota, have all ended child marriage.
The Connecticut Coalition to End Child Marriage includes:
