Global Roundup: Colombia Bans Child Marriage, Namibia Elections, Mexico Gig Workers, Passport Victory for India Trans Woman

Holding a sign saying “They’re girls, not wives,” Angela Anzola, CEO Plan International Colombia attended the senate to express their support for the bill to eliminate child marriage. © Plan International

Colombian lawmakers have approved a bill to change a law that allowed minors to get married with parental consent in the South American country after 17 years of campaigning by advocacy groups and eight failed attempts to push legislation through the house and senate.

After five hours of heated, drawn-out debate on November 12, lawmakers approved the proposed legislation, dubbed They are Girls, Not Wives, which prohibits the marriage of anyone under the age of 18.

We do not want to continue seeing the systematic violence and sexual exploitation of children. Colombia is making history because, for the first time, we have managed to ban child marriage after trying eight times…So it is a great message, not only for Colombia in terms of respect for the rights of boys and girls, but also for the world. Colombian childhood is important, we have to protect it and we have to care for it. -Jennifer Pedraza, congresswoman for the Dignity and Commitment Party and co-author of the bill

Colombia is now one of 12 countries out of the 33 in Latin America and the Caribbean to have entirely banned marriage under the age of 18, following Honduras, Puerto Rico, Mexico and the Dominican Republic.

It ends a 137-year-old loophole in the country’s civil code which allowed under-18s to marry with parental consent. Minors were also deemed to have entered an informal marital union when they cohabited for two years.

There are 4.5 million girls and women in Colombia who married before 18 – about one in four. Of these, a million were married before they were 15, according to Unicef.

Rates of childhood marriage in girls in Colombia are about three times higher than for boys, with children living in poverty and rural or Indigenous communities particularly affected.

Despite decades of economic and social development, the prevalence of child marriage had barely budged due to a deeply ingrained machista [male chauvanist] culture, decades of internal conflict and narcoculture, says Marta Royo, executive director of Profamilia, a non-profit organistation promoting reproductive health services.

We live in an extremely patriarchal society where there is a deep division between what a man wants and a girl wants. In many areas we have a role in life and that role is simply to be mothers, it doesn’t matter at how early an age. It is totally normalised to make girls of 12, 13, 14 not just into wives, but into mothers. -Marta Royo

Rights groups have campaigned to end the practice for 17 years but bills were shot down, with opposition citing tradition and parental rights, and many representatives of the country’s more than 100 Indigenous communities opposed to the bill.