Were you one of the some 175 guests who joined us at Unchained At Last on Monday for our United Nations parallel event? We had a lively conversation about Ending Child Marriage in the U.S. and Globally: Progress, Pitfalls and the Place of News Media.
“We need to let our legislators know we are no longer putting up with this,” our founder and executive director, Fraidy Reiss, declared. “It’s time to end child marriage.”
You can watch the entire conversation on NowThis Her’s Facebook page.
The event coincided with the first day of the 62nd session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the U.N. It was our first U.N. parallel event since we were granted special consultative status with the U.N. Economic and Social Council.
The event’s speakers included:
And the event’s respondents included:
Marriage before 18 is legal in all 50 U.S. states. Most states set 18 as the minimum age, but laws in every state allow exceptions for those younger than 18 to marry. Laws in 24 states do not specify any minimum marriage age.
We lead a growing national movement to end child marriage in every U.S. state. We’re promoting strong legislation to end child marriage that is pending in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Vermont and trying to strengthen legislation to limit child marriage that is pending in Arizona, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, New Hampshire and Tennessee. Just last week Florida passed a bill we helped to write and promote, but not before legislators amended it to limit, rather than end, child marriage.
So far, no state has passed a bill to end all marriage before 18, without exceptions.
Let’s work together to end child marriage in America:
